Drosten Before the Enquete: A Defence Under Police Protection

On 1 December 2025, Christian Drosten appeared as an expert witness before the German Bundestag’s Enquete Commission on “Reckoning with the COVID-19 Pandemic” [1]. The appearance took place under police protection [2].

Drosten defended the measures that had been taken, conceded individual mistakes, and — according to a statement by the AfD parliamentary group — left central questions unanswered [3]. It was one of the first appearances of the Charité virologist before a parliamentary investigation body since the end of the pandemic phase, and since the full release of the RKI crisis-team protocols.

What Drosten said

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In his opening statement [4] and the subsequent questioning, Drosten repeated the core line he has held publicly since 2020:

• The danger of the pandemic arose from the “dynamic transmissibility” of the virus.
• Without general infection control, “unimaginably high” death and patient figures would have been expected.
• A focus of measures primarily on the elderly was not possible because other vulnerable groups could not have protected themselves without general containment.

When pressed on specific mistakes, Drosten pointed out that he had seen himself as a “pandemic explainer”. Some things had been “misunderstood”. As an example, he named the closure of playgrounds — early findings on lower outdoor transmission would not actually have justified this.

What Drosten did not answer

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The AfD parliamentary group, which had nominated several expert witnesses to the commission, documented the unanswered points in a press release [3]:

• Specific recommendations from the NDR Coronavirus-Update podcast that were later scientifically revised remained without self-correction.
• The question about conflicts of interest, particularly in the context of his work for the WHO Pandemic Fund advisory board since 2022 and the WHO SAGO [5], was not answered in detail.
• On the origin of the virus — lab leak versus natural-origin hypothesis — Drosten pointed to ongoing investigations without naming his own current position.

Cicero commented on the session with the line that one could feel “the poison in the air” in the commission [6]. At times, a confrontation developed between the AfD-nominated experts and Drosten.

The background: RKI protocols and the Drosten redaction problem

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In the summer of 2024, the online magazine Multipolar (Paul Schreyer) had sued for further unredaction of the RKI crisis-team protocols before the Berlin Administrative Court [7]. The remaining redactions concerned mainly personal names and companies.

Christian Drosten’s name remained redacted in the official RKI release — even though the virologist had stated in his book that he would not object to the publication of his name [8]. The RKI lawyers explained in court: Drosten had not responded to a corresponding query from the RKI within the one-month deadline, which is why the institute had assumed non-consent.

Drosten subsequently had the Charité press office state that he had “let the deadline lapse” because he had had “no reservations whatsoever” against publication [8].

On 23 July 2024, a research team around the freelance journalist Aya Velázquez published all RKI crisis-team protocols in fully unredacted form [9]. The source had passed her the documents “out of conscience”, according to Velázquez. What is written in the unredacted passages about Drosten’s role has been publicly accessible since then.

Where Drosten stands today

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Drosten is still director of the Institute of Virology at Charité Berlin (since 2017) [10]. His institute was upgraded by the RKI in early 2023 from a consultant laboratory to the National Reference Centre for Coronaviruses — a status improvement in the middle of the reckoning phase.

The NDR podcast “Coronavirus Update”, which he hosted together with Sandra Ciesek, ended with the final episodes on 29 March 2022 and 12 January 2023.

Scientifically, Drosten remains highly cited (for five consecutive years on Clarivate’s list of “Highly Cited Researchers”). Politically, his role as an explainer from the acute phase is no longer available.

What the Enquete must now deliver

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The Enquete Commission has fulfilled its mandate only to a fraction. Three points remain unresolved after 1 December 2025:

1. Self-correction instead of defending the measures. Drosten defended decisions that he himself helped shape through his recommendations. A reckoning must differentiate: What did we know in 2020? What was later refuted? Which recommendations remained uncorrected despite better knowledge?

2. Present the unredacted protocol passages. The Velázquez release contains material that was redacted in the official RKI version. The commission should make both versions synoptically the basis of the questioning.

3. Make conflicts of interest transparent. WHO Pandemic Fund advisory board, SAGO, third-party funders, industry cooperations — the commission needs a complete list, not an enumeration of awards.

Conclusion

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If a central scientist of the pandemic phase can only testify before a parliamentary body under police protection, that is a symptom — not the problem. The problem is that the reckoning, five years after the pandemic began, is still dominated by self-defence rather than self-correction.

Drosten’s appearance on 1 December 2025 was not a reckoning. It was a defence speech.

The next session must be a different one.

Sources

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1. German Bundestag: Enquete Commission “Reckoning with the COVID-19 Pandemic”, session documentation
2. ZDF heute: “Corona: Drosten defends measures, but also concedes mistakes”
3. AfD parliamentary group: “Drosten leaves central questions unanswered in Enquete Commission hearing”
4. Bundestag: Statement of expert witness Prof. Dr. Drosten (PDF)
5. The Pandemic Fund: Christian Drosten, Technical Advisory Panel
6. Cicero: “In the Enquete Commission you can feel the poison in the air”
7. Multipolar: “RKI protocols in court”
8. Multipolar: “More than a thousand passages redacted: Multipolar publishes liberated RKI protocols in original”
9. Berliner Zeitung: “RKI files of the Corona crisis team published fully unredacted”
10. Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin: Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten