Corona virus in Germany: seven-day incidence rises to 1073.0

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A family doctor and a medical assistant carry out corona tests in Laatzen, Lower Saxony

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Julian Stratenschulte / 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 Friday morning as 1073.0.

On Thursday the value was 1017.4, on Friday last week it was 706.3.

The incidence describes the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants over a period of seven days.

According to data from the health authorities, the number of new infections within 24 hours was 190,148 on Friday – after 203,136 the day before and 140,160 on Friday last week.

As the RKI further announced, citing data from the health authorities, 170 new deaths related to the corona virus were counted on Friday.

According to the latest information from the institute, the health authorities have recorded a total of 9,429,079 cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic.

The total number of registered corona deaths in Germany is now 117,484.

The RKI puts the number of people in Germany who have recovered from an illness caused by the coronavirus at around 7,494,200.

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 Thursday, the hospitalization incidence nationwide was 4.64.

After a few weeks of stagnation, the value has recently picked up again significantly.

32 percent of the reported corona tests positive

In the most recent weekly report on Thursday, the RKI pointed out that 32 percent of the reported corona tests in Germany last week were positive.

In the previous week it was still 24 percent.

Due to the "massive" increase in the "infection pressure", there have long been fears that the registered infection numbers do not reflect the actual infection process.

The RKI explained: "Even if not every individual case is recorded in the reporting system", additional indicators "a reliable assessment of the overall development" is possible.

For the assessment of the current situation of the pandemic, "the focus is not on recording all infections by Sars-CoV-2, but on the development of the number and severity of the diseases".

Intensive care physicians warn of increasing patient numbers

Intensive care physicians have meanwhile again warned of the increasing number of patients due to the omicron variant.

The President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), Gernot Marx, told the Rheinische Post that, in view of the “very high incidences”, he expects “the general number of patients to increase significantly again can and certainly will."

The number of Covid patients in the normal wards is also “very, very high,” Marx said.

"Of course, this also affects the entire clinic." An infection with the omicron variant is often milder than with the delta variant, but: "We're not talking about a cold here," says Marx.

»There will be serious courses and also deaths.«

The number of corona patients in the intensive care units had recently decreased – but the number of new admissions has been increasing again since Monday.

However, this is currently being compensated for by the fact that patients from last year's "delta wave" are being transferred to the normal ward or are dying.

There are currently 2363 Covid patients in intensive care.

The intensive care units are still well utilized with "people who could not be operated on in November or December, for example, and are now being ordered in large numbers," Marx told the newspaper.

The head of the German Hospital Society, Gerald Gass, also expected an increasing number of corona patients from Omikron.

"As the infection rate increases, the number of occupancy in the hospital will increase with a time lag," he told the "Rheinische Post".

"On the other hand, we don't expect normal wards to be full, as they have completely different personnel and technical conditions than intensive care wards, which have been heavily used for a long time."

According to Gass, staff shortages could become a problem: "With an increasing number of patients and at the same time increasing staff shortages due to infections, the situation can become tense again," he said.

“Half of the hospitals are already reporting significant absences due to infections that affect care.” In most clinics, the absences due to illness are about 20 percent higher than usual at this time of year.

"All professional groups are equally affected by these failures," Gass continued.

If the situation worsens, operations could be postponed again: »The staffing level in some hospitals, especially in the nursing sector, is so thin that even minor absences can have an impact.«

cop/AFP