Corona in Germany: the majority complains about the health consequences of the pandemic - and the lockdowns

Created: 04/25/2022, 04:49 am

By: Marc Dimitriu

End of the corona test obligation: In some federal states, schoolchildren no longer have to be tested for corona.

© Swen Pförtner/imago

The corona numbers are going down.

No wonder.

Half of all districts do not report any data at the weekend.

In many schools, the corona test obligation ends.

The news ticker about the corona pandemic.

• Health problems due to Corona: 65 percent of adults complain about the consequences.

• After the masks were off, the end of corona tests in schools

• Corona in Germany: incidence is 807.0 on Sunday.

  However, three federal states do not report any data.

• Corona incidence continues to rise: the trend continues for the fourth day in a row

• Fewer PCR tests carried out: Before Easter, only about half as many tests were carried out as in March.

Update from April 24, 8:02 p.m

.: Two years of the corona pandemic have left their mark on many people in Germany.

The majority of adults (65 percent) notice health consequences.

This is the result of a study by the company health insurance company pronova BKK.

Most of the respondents complained about lack of exercise (35 percent), back and neck pain (27 percent) and mental problems (24 percent), as reported by the newspapers of the Funke media group.

16 percent gained more weight and 13 percent increased their consumption of alcohol and cigarettes.

The under-30s are particularly affected by psychological problems such as depressive moods, fears or aggression.

The age group of 18 to 29 year olds also suffers most frequently from back and neck pain.

A total of 1,000 people aged 18 and over were interviewed for the study in January 2022.

Corona test obligation in many schools ends

Update from April 24, 3:38 p.m

.: The corona test obligation ends for most students.

As a survey by the dpa news agency showed, the obligation to test has already been abolished in six federal states or will end at the beginning of the new week.

In six countries, it expires at the end of the month at the latest.

Only in Thuringia (until May 6th) and in Berlin (“until further notice”) will tests continue.

Hamburg and Saarland have not yet made any decisions about how to deal with tests from May.

The President of the Teachers' Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, criticizes the end of compulsory testing.

"We are confronted with the justified concern of families who have risk persons and previously ill children in their own household," Meidinger told the dpa.

The deputy chairman of the Education and Science Union (GEW), Andreas Keller, called it “negligent” to refrain from testing after the mask requirement had been abolished.

"This is the last effective preventive measure that contributes to protecting the health of employees, students and their parents.

The corona pandemic is not over yet,” said Keller.

Corona incidence at 807.0

Update from April 24, 3:08 p.m

.: The nationwide corona incidence is 807.0 on Sunday.

Within 24 hours, 39,179 new coronavirus infections and 24 deaths related to Sars-CoV-2 were reported.

That emerges from the data of the Covid-19 dashboard on Sunday.

Corona in Germany: This is the situation on Sunday (April 24, 2022)

Three federal states have no new cases or deaths this Sunday: Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia.

Hardly any reports were received by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) from Lower Saxony (1 corona case) and Baden-Württemberg (2 corona cases).

From 411 regions in Germany, no new corona data from 216 districts - i.e. neither new infections nor deaths - are received by the RKI, reports the news channel ntv online.

1,552 corona patients are currently being treated in the intensive care units in Germany, 628 of whom have to be artificially ventilated.

This emerges from the data of the DIVI intensive care register on Sunday (as of 3:05 p.m.).

Corona in Germany: Does the obligation to isolate fall?

Update from April 23, 12:30 p.m .:

Will Germany soon be completely free of the obligation to isolate people infected with the corona virus?

After Health Minister Karl Lauterbach had cashed in on the corresponding plans at the beginning of April, the FDP in particular is now reopening the discussion.

Other European countries have already taken this route and abolished the obligation to isolate.

According to the FDP, Germany should now follow this example.

Corona incidence continues to rise: high number of unreported cases suspected

Update from April 23, 7 a.m.:

The nationwide seven-day incidence has increased for the fourth day in a row.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants per week on Saturday morning as 821.7.

For comparison: the day before the value was 733.4.

A week ago, the nationwide incidence was 876.5 (previous month: 1734.2).

The health authorities in Germany reported 135,079 new corona infections to the RKI within one day.

This is evident from numbers that reflect the status of the RKI dashboard at 5 a.m.

A week ago there were 37,568 registered infections.

According to the new information, 234 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours.

A week ago there were 29 deaths.

The RKI has counted 24,141,333 proven infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic.

The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher, as many infections go undetected.

Hamburg only reports infection numbers weekly - pandemic situation is coming to an end

Update from April 22, 12:06 p.m .: In

the future, the Hamburg health authority will only report weekly on the course of the corona pandemic.

With the end of the pandemic situation determined by the citizenship, the daily publication of the figures will also be discontinued, said authority spokesman Martin Helfrich on Friday.

From May, the seven-day incidence, the number of infected people in Hamburg hospitals and the number of corona intensive care patients would be published on the Internet every Tuesday.

The hotspot rule used by the citizenship to extend the corona measures in Hamburg expires on April 30th.

The Senate will discuss how to proceed next Tuesday.

However, it is not expected that there will be a further extension.

This would mean that almost all corona measures would no longer apply in Hamburg from May 1st.

On the one hand, Helfrich gave the reason for the change in the reports on the corona numbers as the number of corona tests, which is expected to continue to fall with the abolition of the measures.

In addition, the incidence of infection is likely to ease further towards the summer due to seasonal effects.

Experts skeptical about fourth vaccination - not useful for everyone

Update from April 22, 9:30 a.m.:

Experts

continue to be very skeptical in the debate about extending the recommendation for fourth-rate corona vaccinations.

Wanting to achieve complete protection against infection through repeated boosters is probably not a realistic goal, said Christoph Neumann-Haefelin, head of the Translational Virus Immunology working group at the University Hospital Freiburg on Thursday afternoon in a video link.

"The aim of the booster vaccination must be to protect the various groups of people from really serious infection progression."

In healthy people without an immune problem, a relatively robust T-cell response lasts almost a year after the second vaccination, Neumann-Haefelin explained.

The first booster vaccination temporarily increases the protection again, also through increased levels of antibodies, and contributes to its duration.

So-called neutralizing antibodies can - if there are enough - already prevent an infection, they are the first line of defense in the body.

T cells, on the other hand, are important for protection against severe courses.

After corona vaccinations, the levels of neutralizing antibodies in the blood, which initially increased, drop again very quickly.

To protect against infection with the Omicron variant, which appeared at the end of 2021, significantly higher levels are required than with earlier variants - this is one of the reasons why the booster campaign in Germany was expanded.

The drop in antibody levels after an infection or vaccination is "a completely normal process," said the scientific director of the German Rheumatism Research Center Berlin, Andreas Radbruch.

What is often neglected in the discussion: There is then less mass, but the quality of the antibodies increases - "and quite drastically".

This very important process (affinity maturation) lasts about half a year and cannot be shortened: If you are now considering a second booster, you can “wait until autumn” against this background.

All in all, Radbruch described the vaccination as “extremely efficient”, and long-lasting protection can be assumed.

Corona in Germany: Incidence continues to rise - number of PCR tests decreases significantly and leads to problems

First report from April 22, 2022:

Berlin – The seven-day incidence in Germany has risen again compared to the previous day.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave it 733.4 on Friday morning (April 22).

For comparison: the day before the value was 720.6.

A week ago, the nationwide incidence was 1001.5 (previous month: 1733.4).

Corona in Germany: Incidence increases again after reporting stops

The health authorities in Germany reported 161,718 new corona infections to the RKI within one day.

A week ago there were 156,864 registered infections.

According to the new information, 289 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours.

A week ago there were 212 deaths.

The RKI gave the hospitalization incidence on Thursday at 4.24 (Wednesday at 3.71).

Here, too, there are days with incomplete reports.

The value also includes many people with a positive corona test who have another main illness.

When considering the values, it must be taken into account that individual states do not report data every weekday, and at weekends, for example, Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony, Brandenburg and Saxony do not, or only partially, report data.

This in turn leads to late registrations on the following days.

A comparison of daily values ​​is therefore becoming increasingly difficult.

In addition, experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI - due to overworked health authorities and because not all infected people have a PCR test done.

Only these count in the statistics.

Fewer and fewer PCR tests carried out: Only half as many tests before Easter

The RKI weekly report also shows that fewer and fewer PCR tests have recently been carried out in more than 200 laboratories nationwide, on which the official statistics are based: After the number in March was sometimes significantly more than 2 million per week, it was in the week before Easter only around 1.1 million.

The significant decline is also due to the Good Friday holiday, writes the RKI.

According to the report, more than every second test (around 55 percent) was positive, which is about as much as in March.

Priority is given to testing people with symptoms.