For the first time in the corona pandemic, more than 150,000 new infections were transmitted to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) within one day.
According to the RKI, the health authorities reported 164,000 cases in 24 hours on Wednesday morning.
On January 19, the number had exceeded 100,000 for the first time.
A week ago there were 112,323 new infections recorded.
The seven-day incidence exceeded the threshold of 900 for the first time: the RKI gave the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week as 940.6.
For comparison: the day before the value was 894.3.
A week ago, the nationwide incidence was 584.4 (previous month: 220.7).
Experts assume that there will be a high and increasing number of cases that are not recorded in the RKI data, partly because testing capacities and health authorities are at their limits in many places.
According to the new information, 166 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours.
A week ago there were 239 deaths.
The RKI has counted 9,035,795 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.
There are still large regional differences in the seven-day incidence.
In Berlin, the incidence is 1,795.5 (in Berlin-Mitte at 3,109.6).
In Saxony (428.3) and Thuringia (337.3) the incidence values are much lower.
The number of corona patients admitted to clinics per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days was 4.07 (Monday 3.87) by the RKI on Tuesday.
The RKI gave the number of recovered people on Wednesday morning as 7,387,800.
The number of people who died from or involved a proven infection with Sars-CoV-2 rose to 117,126.
This Wednesday, for the first time, the Bundestag will be debating in detail the introduction of compulsory vaccination in Germany.
Their supporters see this as a necessary measure to significantly increase the vaccination rate in the fight against the corona virus and thus get the pandemic under control.
Opponents doubt the need for such a requirement, pointing out that leading politicians from all parties have until recently declared in unison that there would be no vaccination requirement.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) still assesses the risk from the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus as "very high". In its weekly report on Tuesday evening, the WHO said that with more than 21 million new infections worldwide in the past seven days, the "highest number of weekly cases recorded since the beginning of the pandemic" was registered. Overall, however, the incidence has grown "slower" than before. According to this, the number of new cases has increased by five percent – compared to 20 percent growth in the previous week. The number of weekly deaths remained roughly the same at 50,000.
The omicron variant is therefore still dominant worldwide.
The delta variant is “continuously declining” while the alpha, beta and gamma variants circulate “very little”.
In the countries where the omicron cases had already risen sharply in November and December, the numbers are now declining.