The seven-day incidence of new corona infections in Germany has reached another high.

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), it was 1472.2 nationwide this Friday morning.

The day before it was 1465.4, a week ago it was 1349.5.

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

As the RKI announced, citing data from the health authorities, the number of new infections within 24 hours was 240,172 – after 247,862 the day before and 248,838 a week ago.

This was the first week-on-week decline since the beginning of the year.

Again more than 200 deaths

In addition, 226 other deaths related to the corona virus were recorded on Friday.

The total number of registered deaths infected with the Sars-CoV-2 virus in Germany is now 119,679.

According to the RKI, the health authorities have recorded a total of 12,009,712 cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic.

The institute puts the number of people who have recovered from corona disease in Germany at around 8,597,300.

In November, the federal and state governments had defined the so-called hospitalization incidence as the decisive benchmark for tightening or relaxing the corona measures.

This value indicates how many people per 100,000 inhabitants are hospitalized within seven days because of a corona infection.

According to the latest RKI report, the hospitalization incidence on Thursday was 6.23 nationwide.

Omicron Wave is losing speed

According to the latest RKI weekly report on Thursday, the increase in the number of cases is slowing down.

They grew just 14 percent last week from 34 percent growth the week before.

In Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin, which were affected by the omicron wave earlier than the rest of the country, the number of cases has already fallen again.

Nevertheless, the RKI warned: "The peak of the fifth wave has not yet been reached."

In recent weeks, the RKI has noted a “significant increase in doctor consultations for acute respiratory diseases with a Covid 19 diagnosis, including in the elderly population”.

It was “already at the level of the fourth wave”.

The number of corona-positive patients in the intensive care units rose to 2389 - in the previous week it was 2307.