The nationwide seven-day incidence of new corona infections has risen sharply again.

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the value was 1388.5 on Thursday morning.

The previous day it was 1319.0, on Thursday last week it was 1265.0.

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

As the RKI further reported, citing data from the health authorities, the number of new infections reported within 24 hours was 262,752.

215,854 new infections were reported the day before, compared to 216,322 a week ago.

The total number of registered cases of infection in Germany since the beginning of the corona pandemic has increased to 16,504,822.

According to the RKI, 259 further deaths related to the corona virus were registered within 24 hours.

The total number of corona deaths recorded in Germany rose to 125,023.

Soon half a billion people will be infected worldwide

So far, around 448.45 million people worldwide have been shown to have contracted the corona virus.

This is the result of a Reuters survey based on official data.

Over 6.40 million people died with or from the virus, which was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019.

The United States has the highest number of infections and deaths.

India and Brazil follow in terms of infections.

Against the background of the rapidly accelerating rate of infection in Germany, the chairman of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, has criticized the corona rules that will apply from March 20 as insufficient.

"The 'basic protection' is really just a 'basic protection' - and of course better than nothing," says Montgomery to the newspapers of the Funke media group.

“Further-reaching, sensible measures” have been “successfully talked down” by politicians.

The principle of hope governs the rules that Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) presented on Wednesday.

The omicron subtype BA.2 is circulating

The bioinformatician Lars Kaderali from Greifswald sees Germany in a new corona wave.

"This is mainly due to the fact that the omicron subtype BA.2 is even more infectious than the original variant," he told the German Press Agency.

In addition, there would be the easing of the corona measures.

“In combination, both lead to the increasing number of cases.” The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has been reporting an increase in the nationwide seven-day incidence for about a week.

Kaderali, a member of the Federal Government's Corona Expert Council, nevertheless considers the easing announced by the Federal Government to be justifiable.

"Although the corona numbers are increasing nationwide, the situation in the hospitals is still undramatic," he said.

"But you should only loosen up carefully and only with the option of going back if you realize that it's getting too much."

According to a federal and state decision, most of the corona requirements are to be abolished on March 20, but “basic protection” should remain.

On Wednesday, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) presented a draft for a new legal basis that would continue to make it possible, for example, to make masks compulsory in clinics and nursing homes and to carry out compulsory tests in schools.

The state parliaments should also be able to decide on further requirements for regions if they determine the “concrete danger of a dynamically spreading infection situation”.

Corona waves are also possible in summer

With regard to the widely expected flattening of the infection curve in summer, Kaderali said: "The seasonal effect will probably not be enough to bring the incidence down to 0." Health Minister Lauterbach's assumption that there could also be a corona wave in the summer months holds he plausible.

The previous openings could already mean that “we will see a very, very strong increase again and then we will go into the summer with high incidences.”

The Federal Government's Expert Council began its work in mid-December.

The composition of the committee is broad and covers, for example, the areas of virology, pediatric and adolescent medicine, medical ethics, intensive care medicine and educational research.