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Clemens Wendtner is chief physician at the Schwabing Clinic in Munich and a member of the so-called STAKOB Center, which specializes in infectious diseases. He treated both Germany’s first Covid 19 patient and last month the first monkeypox infected person in the country.
With isolation strategies and contact tracing, which the experts were able to take with them from the Corona period, the doctor assumes that the infection process related to monkeypox in Europe can be contained.
In general, according to Wendtner, there is no immediate danger to the population – he does not believe in another pandemic.
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He is the expert in this country par excellence when it comes to the treatment of infectious viral diseases – and the doctor to whom both Germany’s first Covid 19 patient came for examination in 2020 and the first monkeypox infected person last month. The reason: Clemens Wendtner is chief physician at the Schwabing Clinic in Munich and a member of the so-called STAKOB center, which specializes in infectious diseases – his expertise is therefore particularly in demand for highly contagious and life-threatening infections.
The Munich infectiologist treated Germany’s first Covid 19 patient in January 2020. At the time, he still underestimated the virus that catapulted the world into a state of emergency in the following two years. “Despite a probable import of isolated infected cases, there is a high probability that there will be no significant threat to Germany from 2019-nCoV,” he said, referring to the influenza infections that were even more threatening at the time. His assessment changed a short time later.
In an interview with “tagesschau.de” said the infectiologist that, looking back, the clinic was “particularly grateful” to the first patients. With their help, they were able to find out that the virus was found in high concentrations, especially in the nasopharynx, and that transmission was also possible without symptoms .
Wendtner considers the second pandemic unlikely
At that time, all of Germany looked at the clinic in Munich – and two and a half years later, the special unit headed by Wendtner made headlines again: On May 20, 2022, the chief physician received the first known infected person with monkeypox in Germany. In the midst of the initial media turmoil, however, Wendtner struck a calming tone. “We are not assuming a second pandemic. So that is, if, a rather limited infection process,” he told the „ZDF“. Nevertheless, the experts assume that silent infections are currently circulating – as of the end of May, just over 30 cases of monkeypox were known in Germany. “But we hope that with a good isolation strategy and contact tracing, we can contain that,” he said. They would learn lessons from the corona pandemic.
“The general assumption is that West African monkeypox has an overall mortality rate of 1 percent, which primarily affects children under the age of 16,” Wendtner said. “But you have to remember that these data from Africa cannot necessarily be transferred to the healthcare system in Europe or the USA, where mortality would be lower. This is a disease that, in my opinion, does not have the potential to pose a massive threat to the population.”
According to Wendtner, “Patient 1” was suffering from a milder form of monkeypox. “From a medical point of view, he was not hospitalized,” he explained “tagesschau.de”. If the 26-year-old man had not resided in Lisbon, he could have simply gone into domestic isolation.
Symptoms usually disappear after three to four weeks after an infection. The Robert Koch Institute lists the drug Tecovirimat as a possible therapy option for immunocompromised people. It has been approved in the EU since January 2022, like the “Pharmaceutical Newspaper” reported.
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