Dhe incidence of new corona infections in Germany has reached another high. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the seven-day incidence on Monday morning 528.2 on. The day before the value was still at 515.7 a week ago it was 375.5. It was the fourth day in a row with a new record value.
The incidence quantifies the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants over a period of seven days.
The health authorities also reported on Monday 34,145 new infections within 24 hours. A week ago it was 25,255. As the RKI further announced, 30 new deaths related to the corona virus were counted on Monday. The number of known infections has risen to slightly more than eight million.
According to the latest information from the institute, the health authorities have recorded a total of 8,000,122 cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic. The total number of registered corona deaths in Germany rose to 115,649. The institute put the number of people in Germany who had recovered from an illness caused by the corona virus at around seven million.
In November, the federal and state governments had defined the so-called hospitalization incidence as the decisive benchmark for tightening the corona measures. This value indicates how many people per 100,000 inhabitants are in the hospital within seven days because of a corona infection. According to the latest RKI report on Friday, the hospitalization incidence nationwide was 3.23.
All developments in the live ticker:
3:30 a.m. – Omicron could exacerbate the lack of care
The Hessian Hospital Society fears that the omicron wave could increase the existing bottlenecks among nursing staff. If, as experts expect, many people become infected with the corona variant in the next few weeks, nurses and carers would also be absent because they fell ill or had to be quarantined. “That can become our main problem in the next few weeks,” said Steffen Gramminger, director of the Hessian Hospital Society (HKG), the German Press Agency.
“After two years of the pandemic, we feel the constant burden of care,” said Gramminger. “Everything is already sewn to the brim.” Employees have given notice, reduced their working hours or had themselves transferred. The problem mainly affects intensive care units. According to the HKG, there are no concrete figures for the entire country. “However, the feedback from the clinics is unequivocal.” If, given this initial situation, there were also a massive failure due to Omikron, you could quickly “crash an emergency situation,” said Gramminger. “It doesn’t have to be that way, but it can happen, and there have to be plans in place for that eventuality.”
3:01 a.m. – New corona rules in Brandenburg
In Brandenburg, the stricter corona rules apply from Monday. The 2G plus rule then applies to visiting restaurants. Anyone who has been vaccinated and recovered but does not have a booster vaccination needs a daily negative corona test. Children under the age of 6 do not need proof. Anyone under the age of 18 needs proof of full vaccination, but no test or booster vaccination.
These are the new, tightened corona rules
With the Omikron wave in mind, the prime ministers of the federal states have made new decisions: the catering industry will be tightened, while quarantine rules will be relaxed. There is praise for this, but also criticism.
Source: WELT/ Eybe Ahlers
However, the 2G plus rule will no longer apply once the situation in the hospitals has eased. After a compromise with the CDU, it will be suspended if the warning light for the seven-day incidence of new hospital patients with Covid-19 nationwide is yellow or green for a week and at the same time green for the proportion of intensive care beds with Covid-19 patients. This is currently not the case.
FFP2 masks will be compulsory in local public transport from Monday. The obligation to wear FFP2 masks and surgical masks is being expanded: so far, they could be removed indoors, for example in cinemas, theaters and during court hearings, if there was a distance of at least one meter to the next seat. That’s gone now.
2:05 a.m. – Teachers criticize school minister: lack of corona precautions
Several teacher associations in North Rhine-Westphalia accuse School Minister Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) of not taking adequate precautions for the schools in view of the increasing number of corona cases. “If politics declares face-to-face teaching to be the top priority, this must be clearly reflected in short- and long-term measures,” said Stefan Behlau, state chairman of the Education and Training Association, of the “Rheinische Post” (Monday).
The NRW state chairwoman of the GEW, Ayhan Celik, emphasized: “We are very concerned that there is no plan B for face-to-face teaching.” The increasing number of quarantine cases means that there is a risk that many schools will switch to distance teaching uncontrolled. The state chairman of the NRW Teachers’ Association, Andreas Bartsch, is demanding a threshold value from the Ministry of Education above which distance teaching should take place. Only then are principals able to act. “This value can be as high as 1000,” said Bartsch.
According to the report, the Ministry of Education does not yet see any danger for face-to-face teaching. According to the ministry, only 1.83 percent of all teachers (2774 educators) did not take part in face-to-face operations due to the pandemic. The primary goal of the state government and the Ministry of Schools and Education is to keep the schools open and to ensure face-to-face teaching, it said.
1:20 a.m. – Great Britain wants to lift the obligation to isolate at home
According to a newspaper, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to lift the legal requirement for domestic isolation after an infection. The plans should be worked out over the coming weeks, reports The Telegraph newspaper.
The recommendations for quarantine should remain within your own four walls. However, disregard will no longer result in fines or other penalties.
1:05 a.m. – Lower Saxony’s interior minister: consistently intervene in corona demos
Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius has announced that the state will take consistent action against rule violations and violence during protests against the Corona policy. “Anyone who resists police action or tries to break through a police line with reckless force or even with a child in front of their stomach is a clear sign of aggression and an attack on the state. And we will not put up with that, representing the vast majority of citizens,” said the SPD politician of the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (Monday).
“There is talk of a dictatorship and fascists, there is talk of violence and conspiracies. And this shows that many of those who take to the streets are not actually concerned with the Corona measures, but rather with contempt and denigration of the state and democracy,” Pistorius emphasized. Here, the “well-fortified constitutional state” will be very careful and intervene wherever necessary.
12:10 am – More work-related illnesses
According to a newspaper, the number of work-related illnesses has increased significantly during the pandemic. It was 39,551 cases in 2020, reports “Bild” in advance, citing a report by the federal government.
This is an increase of 93.7 percent over the previous year and a new record. Among them are 18,959 cases of healthcare workers or laboratories with occupational diseases caused by infections. The overall economic costs of the inability to work would be 144 billion euros.
12:05 a.m. – Virologist Stöhr: First the infection, then a very relaxed summer
In view of the current wave of corona with the highly contagious omicron variant, virologist Klaus Stöhr expects the disease to spread in the coming weeks, followed by natural immunization of the population – and finally the pandemic will end. “There will be uncertainty over the next two to three weeks as to how high the incidence will rise. After that, a lot of people will get natural immunity due to the very strong epidemic that will unfortunately set in then, which cannot be averted,” he said on Sunday evening on the TV station Bild.
This immunity is “planted on top” of immunization through vaccinations, Stöhr continued. Both together will lead to a lasting immune protection, so that you don’t have to boost the fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh time. In the fall you have to see whether you can make the over 60-year-olds again a vaccination offer.
In view of the millions of unvaccinated or at least not fully vaccinated people, caution is still very important, according to Stöhr. Nevertheless, he is convinced: “In spring and summer it will be very relaxed.”
12:01 a.m. – Vaccination compulsory for over 60-year-olds in Greece
Unvaccinated Greeks over 60 will be asked to pay from now on: Anyone who continues not to have the corona vaccination administered will be fined 50 euros in January, and from February it will be 100 euros a month. The regulation came into force on Monday night. According to the state broadcaster, around 300,000 people are affected by the measure. Your data should now be forwarded by the state social security system to the tax office, which collects the fines. The money then goes to the state hospitals. In Greece, the vaccinations administered are stored in a personalized database.
The government already rates the measure as a success: Since the announcement of penalties a good six weeks ago, around 217,000 over 60-year-olds have been vaccinated. This increased the vaccination rate in this age group to 90 percent.
12:01 a.m. – FDP politician Thomae: “Omicron changes the rules of the game”
The FDP politician Stephan Thomae has confirmed his doubts about general corona vaccination. “Omicron is changing the rules of the game,” said the parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (Monday). “Now is not the time to just do anything and decide on the toughest possible measures just to show willingness to act. It’s about doing the right thing at the right time.”
Thomae demanded that the compulsory vaccination discussion must be conducted calmly and taking into account the latest scientific findings: “Before we vaccinate in the summer season with a vaccine whose effect may wear off again in the next winter season and/or be undermined by a new variant , we should ask ourselves if it doesn’t make sense to wait and see which mutation we’ll be dealing with next fall.”