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Pedestrian zone in Greifswald
Photo: Stefan Sauer / dpa
The incidence of new corona infections in Germany has again reached a high.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the seven-day incidence on Monday morning as 840.3.
On Sunday the value was 806.8, on Monday last week it was 528.2.
According to data from the health authorities, the number of new infections within 24 hours was 63,393 on Monday – after 85,440 the day before and 34,145 on Monday last week.
After the weekend, the numbers are usually a bit lower.
As the RKI further announced, citing data from the health authorities, 28 new deaths related to the corona virus were counted on Monday.
According to the latest information from the institute, the health authorities have recorded a total of 8,744,840 cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic.
The total number of registered corona deaths in Germany is now 116,746.
The RKI puts the number of people in Germany who have recovered from an illness caused by the coronavirus at around 7,273,100.
In Germany, the highly contagious omicron variant of the corona virus now dominates.
The heads of the federal and state governments therefore want to discuss new measures on Monday.
A resolution proposal from Sunday refers to new infections of over 100,000 cases a day and the latest assessment by the Federal Government’s Expert Council.
According to this, with the seven-day incidence per 100,000 inhabitants, values of several thousand could soon be reached regionally for new infections.
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 Friday, the hospitalization incidence nationwide was 3.77.
According to the draft resolution, the federal and state governments are not initially planning to relax the existing corona measures.
But for the first time, an end to the restrictions is also being envisaged: The document says literally that for the moment “at which an overload of the health system can be ruled out”, the federal and state governments would “develop perspectives for opening”.
Furthermore, the federal and state governments want to react to the rapidly increasing number of corona infections by changing the test strategy.
According to the updated draft resolution, laboratories are already overloaded.
»When bottlenecks occur, it is therefore essential to prioritize.«
PCR tests are only available to a limited extent.
They should be "focused on vulnerable groups and staff who care for and treat them."
Specifically, it is about staff in hospitals, in practices, in nursing, integration assistance facilities and for people at risk of serious illnesses.
If an infection is suspected, a PCR test should continue to be carried out on these people – the same applies to high-risk patients.
In addition, the PCR test capacities are to be expanded.
(Read more about the content of the draft resolution here.)
cop/AFP