Enlarge image
Corona test in Berlin (archive image)
Photo: STEFANIE LOOS / AFP
The seven-day incidence and the number of new corona infections in Germany have again reached record levels.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the
seven-day incidence
on Thursday morning as
638.8
.
The previous day the value was 584.4, a week ago it was 427.7.
According
to data from the health
authorities
, the
number of
new infections
within 24 hours was
133,536
– after 112,323 the day before and 81,417 a week ago.
It is the seventh day in a row with a new record incidence and the second day with a new high in new infections.
The incidence quantifies the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants over a period of seven days.
On Thursday,
234 new deaths
related to the corona virus were also reported.
The total number of registered corona deaths in Germany thus increases to 116,315.
According to the latest RKI information, the health authorities have recorded a total of 8,320,386 cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic.
The institute put the number of people in Germany who had recovered from an illness caused by the coronavirus at around 7,139,800.
In November, the federal and state governments had defined the so-called
hospitalization
incidence as the decisive benchmark for tightening the corona measures .
This value indicates how many people per 100,000 inhabitants are in the hospital within seven days because of a corona infection.
According to the latest RKI report on Wednesday, the hospitalization incidence nationwide was
3.34
.
Lauterbach
expects hundreds of thousands of new infections per day
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) spoke on Wednesday evening at “Markus Lanz”, among other things, about the falling hospitalization rate in Germany despite the currently high number of new infections. This is an "irrelevant snapshot" since the wave that is currently running in England and France is yet to come in Germany, said Lauterbach. "I would expect the right load in the intensive care units in mid-late February, that's still a month away and then I hope it will still look good," he explained. "That will be the endurance test, not what we see now."
Lauterbach also said in the TV show that, with a view to realistic scenarios, it can be assumed “that the wave will peak around mid-February and that we will then have to expect several hundred thousand cases per day”.
It is not said that the scenarios will come about, but "they have the greatest probability".
You can read more about this in this detailed report.
aar/AFP