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Corona test in Berlin (symbol image)
Photo: Christophe Gateau / dpa
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has presented its weekly report on the current corona situation.
Among other things, it reports higher incidences, more outbreaks in old people’s and nursing homes and an increasing number of patients with Covid-19 in intensive care units.
The nationwide
seven-day incidence
saw a 38 percent increase last week compared to the previous week, according to the weekly report.
Accordingly, this increase affected all age groups, especially older people, children and young people.
The incidence indicates the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week.
According to the report, there was again a significant increase
in the
number of outbreaks in old people’s and nursing homes
and the
number of people treated with Covid-19 in intensive care units in the past week.
According to the Divi intensive care register, the number of patients in an intensive care unit was 934 on Thursday – compared to a good 600 patients at the beginning of the month.
In addition, according to the weekly report, the omicron subvariant BA.5
, which has been dominant in Germany for some time, has
recently increased again.
According to the latest findings - a sample from the week before last - their share was almost 66 percent.
The week before, BA.5's share was around 52 percent.
As the RKI experts write, the BA.4 variant has recently continued to rise, but less strongly than in the previous weeks.
According to the latest findings, it was around 7 percent.
In Germany, the genome is only completely examined in a small proportion of positive samples.
"Thus, the proportions of the omicron sublines in Germany follow the trend in many other countries," it said.
According to the current state of knowledge, the so-called spike proteins of BA.4 and BA.5 have properties “that are associated with increased transmissibility and/or immune escape”.
However, the epidemiological data available to date does not indicate that infections with BA.4 or BA.5 cause more severe disease progressions or proportionately more deaths than BA.1 and BA.2 before them, the experts write in the report.
Nevertheless, the sharp increase in cases of infection alone is currently showing a higher number of severe courses – which is reflected in the increasing number of hospitalizations.
"An increase in the number of deaths is indicated with regard to the expected late reports," warns the RKI.
RKI reports 113,099 new infections for Friday
The RKI also published its latest figures on infection rates early on Friday morning.
Accordingly, the seven-day incidence rose to 682.7.
The day before, the value was 668.6 (previous week: 618.2; previous month: 207).
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 113,099 new corona infections (previous week: 108,190) and 84 new deaths (previous week: 90) to the RKI within one day.
Here, too, comparisons of the data are only possible to a limited extent.
Expert commission presents evaluation of pandemic measures
On Friday afternoon, a commission of experts will present an evaluation of the previous state corona restrictions.
The traffic light coalition has agreed to wait for the scientific assessment before deciding on possible further everyday requirements for the autumn.
A more critical pandemic situation is then expected.
The health ministers of the federal states want to position themselves at a special conference on Friday.
aar/dpa
