Has the Corona summer wave already broken?

Individual data on the pandemic from the federal states at least make the hope of an end to the current accumulation of infections not entirely unfounded.

In Bavaria, for example, the seven-day incidence has been falling for about a week, on Friday the value in Bavaria was 786 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants within a week;

in the previous week there had been 953.

The number also fell in Lower Saxony, where the incidence was 675 on Friday. Nationwide, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the value of the new infections on Friday as 607 – however, a number of infections are likely to have remained undetected throughout the country and not in the official statistics must have been included.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in Politics.

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A look at the so-called hospitalization incidence, which shows the proportion of newly admitted patients with a positive corona test, sharpens the picture a little.

The figures for this indicator have also been falling for about a week – albeit very slowly.

On Friday, the hospitals reported to the RKI an average of 7.4 new admissions with positive corona results per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days.

A week ago, the hospitalization incidence reported daily was slightly higher at 7.9 cases.

The value makes it clear how many hospital patients carried the virus;

whether they came to the hospital because of a Covid 19 disease remains open.

The virus continues to affect older people

However, the RKI does not want to give the all-clear for the rest of the summer, for good reasons.

In the coming weeks, “cases and, especially in the older age groups, hospitalizations, an increase in intensive care treatments and deaths can still be expected,” writes the institute in its most recent weekly report, which it published on Thursday evening.

Recently, the number of corona outbreaks in medical treatment facilities and in old people's and nursing homes has continued to rise.

Corona continues to burden the healthcare system with many seriously ill people;

the sometimes high staff shortages in the clinics add to this and further aggravate the supply situation.

This shows the development of a special indicator that the RKI has recalculated again in its report.

The hospitals also report to the authorities the number of cases in which patients infected with corona have to be treated for an acute and serious respiratory disease, abbreviated in technical jargon as SARI.

In these cases, the suspicion arises that the course of Covid-19 is severe.

The SARI hospitalization incidence increased significantly in June and, according to the RKI, has now "stabilized at an elevated level".

In the past week, the data on which the weekly report largely refers, the SARI incidence was 4.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants within one week – this corresponds to around 3900 new patients.

Older people in particular continue to be affected by a severe course of Covid-19.

In the group of over 80-year-olds, the SARI hospitalization incidence of 35 was more than seven times higher than the average of all age groups.

At the same time, older people tend to be vaccinated against Corona more often than average.

The number of patients who are in the intensive care units of the hospitals with a positive corona result is also comparatively high at the moment.

The intensive care register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine reported 1,471 seriously ill people nationwide on Friday.

On Tuesday the value was even higher at 1594, so the curve is flattening out.

But compared to the beginning of June, the numbers are still significantly higher.

At that time, the intensive care units nationwide only recorded a good 600 infected people.