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Rapid antigen test in Bayreuth
Photo: Daniel Vogl / dpa
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Doctors are pushing for comprehensive corona monitoring in clinics
3:26 a.m .:
Intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis is pushing for better registration of corona patients in hospitals.
"The situation on the normal wards in Germany can become particularly dramatic if the number of cases continues to go through the roof," said the scientific director of the intensive care register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) of the "Rheinische Post".
“We finally need monitoring that, like the intensive care register, reliably records hospital patients infected with corona.
So far, this has been an unacceptable blind flight that we can no longer afford.” The federal government must remedy the situation quickly, said Karagiannidis.
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The omicron wave has not yet had an impact on the intensive care units in Germany.
According to the latest Divi data, the number of people infected with corona treated there fell just below the 3000 mark for the first time since mid-November.
The trend is also declining in the number of reported first-time admissions.
However, experts see no reason to give the all-clear, among other things because of open questions about Omikron and an expected further increase in infections.
The Divi President Gernot Marx told the editorial network Germany that people under the age of 35 are currently mainly infected with omicron.
"These develop a severe course much less frequently than older people, so they are not yet or only occasionally patients in our intensive care units."
According to Marx, it is expected that compared to the Delta variant, in which around 0.8 percent of all infected people had to be treated in intensive care, significantly fewer people who tested positive would take such a severe course.
"Should the incidences increase sharply due to the very rapid spread, that will of course still be a problem," he warned.
"So we hope that the number of Covid-19 patients can still drop significantly before the next wave comes."
Central Council of Jews criticizes comparisons of corona policy with the Third Reich
2:56 a.m .:
The President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, has sharply criticized comparisons between German Corona policy and the Third Reich.
"I have absolutely no understanding for that," Schuster told the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung."
He disapproves of “these comparisons, partly because Jews in the Third Reich had no way of escaping”.
To describe current government measures to contain the corona pandemic as persecution is “simply wrong”.
Schuster, who is a doctor himself, explained that people without a corona vaccination would be excluded from certain areas where 2G prevailed for reasons of health protection.
"But it is up to the people themselves to change that - they just have to be vaccinated," added the President of the Central Council of Jews.
During protests against the corona measures in Germany, participants repeatedly allege that a dictatorship similar to that in the Third Reich is being set up.
Yellow stars with the inscription »Unvaccinated«, reminiscent of the compulsory identification for Jews under the Nazi regime, were also repeatedly seen at the protests.
Schuster also criticized the AfD in the “NOZ”.
The party contributes "with its agitation" to changing the political climate in Germany, said the President of the Central Council.
He therefore hopes "that court decisions will soon be taken on complaints by the AfD, so that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution can list the entire party as a suspected case and thus monitor it."
EU Commissioner Urpilainen: If possible, no corona vaccination
1:46 a.m .:
The EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, has expressed the hope of achieving a high vaccination rate in the fight against the corona epidemic without vaccination being compulsory.
"I think and hope that more and more people are willing to be vaccinated so that it is not necessary to switch to mandatory vaccination," she told the Funke media group.
"We must vaccinate the entire world population to end the pandemic," Urpilainen said.
The EU is aiming for a global vaccination rate of 70 percent by 2023.
By the end of 2021, the EU and its member states would have distributed 380 million doses to developing countries.
"We want to deliver a total of 700 million cans to these countries by the end of June 2022." She counts on Germany's support for this.
more on the subject
Corona crisis: Would the general obligation to vaccinate be unconstitutional? By Dietmar Hipp
Too little is being done, especially for Africa, said the former Finnish finance minister.
The EU wants to adopt an additional vaccination support package for Africa by the EU-Africa summit on February 17 and 18 in Brussels.
“And now we are starting vaccine production in four African countries”: in Senegal, South Africa, Rwanda and Ghana.
The EU will be involved with one billion euros from the Commission, the Member States and their financial institutions.
New high for new corona infections in Latin America and the Caribbean
1:10 a.m .:
In view of the rapid spread of the omicron variant, the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have registered a new high in daily new corona infections. From January 7th to 13th, an average of 304,000 new infections were detected in the region every day, according to a calculation by the AFP news agency based on information from the authorities. This is almost twice as much as the previous high of 155,000 new corona infections per day during the previous corona wave in the region in May/June 2021.
The number of daily corona deaths has also increased significantly in the past seven days: with an average of 621 deaths per day, the increase compared to the previous week was 44 percent.
However, the number of victims of the current corona wave is not as high as in the previous wave.
From April 6th to 12th, more than 5,500 corona deaths were reported daily in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The country most severely affected by the pandemic is Argentina.
In the past seven days, it has reported an average of almost 140,000 new infections every day.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, almost seven million corona infections and more than 117,000 deaths have been registered in the country of 45 million inhabitants.
cop/dpa/AFP/Reuters
