Health offices in Germany have reported 2440 new Corona infections to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) within one day. This is according to figures from Sunday morning, which reflect the status of the RKI dashboard as of 05:04. For comparison, a week ago the figure had been 3852 infections. The RKI gave the seven-day incidence on Sunday morning with 24.7 nationwide. On the previous day it had been at 26.3, in the previous week at 35.2. Whereas on Saturday Hildburghausen in Thuringia was still above the critical threshold of 100, all counties and independent cities in Germany are now below an incidence of 90. Among the federal states, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has the lowest value (8.4); Thuringia has the highest with 30.

However, in a situation report, the RKI pointed to the Corpus Christi holiday in many federal states on Thursday: "When interpreting the case numbers, it should be noted that fewer people visit a doctor on holidays, which also means that fewer samples are taken and fewer laboratory tests are performed. This results in fewer pathogen detections being reported to the relevant health authorities."According to the data, 74 new deaths were recorded throughout Germany within 24 hours. A week ago, there had been 56 deaths.

Relaxation in the intensive care units

In the view of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), the workload in hospitals has improved. "A clear relaxation can be felt in the wards," DIVI President Prof. Gernot Marx told Editorial Network Germany. The developments were going in the right direction.The numbers showed that the vast majority of citizens behaved very disciplined, vaccinations and the federal emergency brake had their effect. However, infections could increase again in the fall if many people become careless, Marx said. A fourth wave is possible, he said. "The risk for that, that there could be a lot of serious illnesses and deaths again, is still there."

The RKI counted 3,700,367 confirmed infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic, but the actual total number is likely to be much higher because many infections go undetected.The RKI gave the number of people who recovered as 3,538,000. The number of people who have died from or with the involvement of a confirmed infection with Sars-CoV-2 is now reported at 89,222.

The nationwide seven-day R value was 0.84, according to the RKI situation report Saturday evening, up from 0.88 the previous day. This means that 100 infected people mathematically infect 84 other people. The R-value represents in each case the infection occurrence 8 to 16 days ago. If the R-value is below 1 for a longer period of time, the incidence of infection is decreasing; if it is continuously above 1, the number of cases is increasing.

Photo by Martin Sanchez