Record corona numbers in 2022: Nevertheless, the pandemic in Bavaria has lost its terror

Created: 12/25/2022, 10:15 am

By: Thomas Eldersch

Corona was only a marginal phenomenon for many people in 2022.

© Sebastian Kahnert/dpa

In 2022, more people were infected with the corona virus than ever before.

Nevertheless, there are fewer and fewer rules and protective measures in Bavaria.

Munich – The third year of Corona is nearing its end.

While hospitals in China are currently bursting at the seams and millions of people are infected, the once deadly pandemic in Bavaria is only of secondary importance.

Meanwhile, this year was the worst year since the outbreak of the disease in early 2020 - at least when it comes to the infection numbers.

In the meantime, however, the RS virus, the flu and other respiratory diseases have overtaken the corona virus.

Corona in Bavaria: Several million infected people at the beginning of the year

At the beginning of the year, the number of infections and the incidence in Bavaria rose to unimagined heights.

Values ​​peaked on March 23.

Omicron raged and the incidence was 2400. In the first three and a half months of 2022, more than three million infections were reported in Bavaria.

This was more than twice as many as in 2020 and 21. This is based on data from the State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL).

One of the millions infected was the head of state personally.

Markus Söder (CSU) announced his illness on April 9th.

But not only the status of the pandemic changed in 2022. The strict and often stubborn CSU boss also made a change this year.

While he once called out the "Team Caution" and enforced the strictest corona rules in Bavaria in Germany, his approach changed despite the high number of infections.

He switched first to the "Team Awareness" until it was time to propagate the "Team Freedom".

This radical change of course was partly taken up with humor.

Other team affiliations were quickly attributed to him.

For example, Söder plays in "Team Volksfest-Hopping" or in "Team O zapft is", because he had his picture taken at numerous folk festivals and parades in the Free State.

His Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) had to backtrack.

“There can be no question of a 'Team O taps is'.

Our goal was and is always to have a pragmatic pandemic policy that is adapted to the situation.”

Some corona vaccine damage was officially recognized in Bavaria (video)

Corona is entering a different phase in Bavaria

"Of course we took much stricter protective measures, especially in the initial phase, because we initially knew too little about the virus and its variants, and we initially had no vaccinations," said Holetschek of the dpa in Munich.

Over time, however, a lot has been learned about the virus, the protective mechanisms have improved and vaccination has been carried out extensively.

"Now we are facing the third anniversary of the first Corona case in Bavaria and Germany and are of course in a different phase."

(By the way: Our Bayern newsletter informs you about all the important stories from Bavaria. Register here.)

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The spring wave was followed by an almost equally rampant summer wave.

The numbers hardly went down.

Festivals and events still took place.

Then the autumn wave rolled in.

It is difficult to say how high this was.

People are getting tested less and less.

Experts expected an enormous increase in the number of unreported cases.

Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) said, with a view to the nationwide situation, that the true infection process was three to four times the incidence.

In any case, hospitalizations with corona – another indicator of the infection process – rose higher than ever before during the autumn wave.

Hardly any corona rules in Bavaria

At the end of the year we had reached around five million infections in Bavaria.

Fortunately, the number of deaths did not increase in the same period.

Nevertheless, several thousand people died in Bavaria in connection with the corona virus in 2022.

Meanwhile, Markus Söder continued to push ahead with his “Team Freedom”.

He stormed ahead with Bavaria in easing the corona isolation requirement and was one of the first to relax the mask requirement in public transport.

This is justified in Munich with a lack of a legal basis due to the low incidence, but other federal states are still sticking to it.

And the incidence, which has accompanied us for years as a fixed number in every news program, is only a shadow of itself. Because fewer and fewer tests are being carried out, it is only of little significance.

Most recently, the number of PCR tests fell below 100,000 per week.

In February there were six times as many.

"Due to the relaxed test strategy, the seven-day incidence has largely lost its 'seismograph function'," said Clemens Wendtner, chief physician of infectiology at the Munich Clinic Schwabing, at the end of November.

At that time he estimated the number of unreported cases to be at least a factor of ten.