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Corona rapid test (symbol image)
Photo: Peter Kneffel / dpa
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the nationwide seven-day incidence on Thursday morning as 668.6.
This is evident from numbers that reflect the status of the RKI dashboard at 5 a.m.
The day before, the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 646.3 (previous week: 532.9; previous month: 189.0).
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 that are 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 132,671 new corona infections (previous week: 119,360) and 83 deaths (previous week: 98) 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 many federal states do not transmit them to the RKI, especially at weekends, and report their cases later in the week.
The RKI has counted 28,180,861 infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic.
The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher.
Corona
tests are no longer generally free
Most people in Germany now have to pay for a quick corona test themselves.
From this Thursday, free “citizen tests” at test centers or in pharmacies will only be available for risk groups, for people who deal with particularly vulnerable groups and for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
This is provided for in a new test regulation by the Federal Ministry of Health.
Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach and Minister of Finance Christian Lindner had agreed last week to significantly restrict the "citizen tests".
They have been around since spring 2021 - with a brief interruption last autumn. According to Lauterbach, spending on them was recently around one billion euros per month.
“Not everything can be paid for by the federal government in the long term because our possibilities have reached their limits,” Lindner justified the new regulations.
In the future, women in the first trimester of pregnancy will still be entitled to a free test, children up to five years of age, members of the household of infected people, caring relatives, people with disabilities and their carers or residents and visitors of nursing homes, clinics or facilities for people with disabilities.
For tests on the occasion of family celebrations, concerts and other indoor events, an additional payment of three euros is due.
This also applies to a red Corona warning app or before private meetings with people over 60 or with previous illnesses outside of clinics or care facilities.
If you want such a test, you have to sign that it is done for this purpose.
aar/dpa
