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Rapid corona test (symbol image): Many infected people do not have a PCR test done after a positive result
Photo: Matthias Balk / dpa
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the nationwide seven-day incidence on Saturday morning as 348.9.
The day before, the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 318.7 (previous week: 270.3; previous month: 507.1).
However, the incidence does not provide a complete picture of the infection situation.
Experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI - mainly because by far not all infected people have a PCR test done.
Only positive PCR tests count in the statistics.
In addition, late registrations or transmission problems can lead to a distortion of individual daily values.
The health authorities in Germany recently reported 65,337 new corona infections (previous week: 41,087) and 77 deaths (previous week: 73) to the RKI within one day.
Here, too, comparisons of the data are only possible to a limited extent due to the test behavior, late registrations or transmission problems.
In general, the number of registered new infections and deaths varies significantly from weekday to weekday, since more and more federal states do not transmit to the RKI, especially at weekends, and report their cases later in the week.
The RKI has counted 26,803,867 proven infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic.
The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher, as many infections go undetected.
Meanwhile, Bavaria's Health Minister Klaus Holetschek warns of the increasing number of infections caused by the new omicron subvariant BA.5.
After waves in other countries, it is to be expected that BA.5 will soon become dominant in Germany, said the CSU politician on Saturday in Munich.
"The infection pressure could increase again." However, Holetschek does not see any reason to tighten the corona regulations.
BA.5 does not appear to cause more severe disease than previous types of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
However, this is no reason to be careless.
In autumn, new virus variants are to be expected, which could be more contagious and possibly also more dangerous.
In this context, he criticized the course of the federal government.
These have not yet adapted the Infection Protection Act to possible developments.
“Meanwhile, the Berlin traffic light, which was at odds over the Corona issue, is in danger of missing the train to make the necessary changes in time for the summer break of the Bundestag,” said Holetschek.
The federal government must enable the states to react “quickly and appropriately” to new waves of infection.
bbr/dpa