The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reports 146,607 new infections within 24 hours. That is 29,718 more cases than on Sunday a week ago. Overall, the number of confirmed infections in Germany is more than 17.1 million. The nationwide seven-day incidence rises to 1526.8 from 1496.0 the previous day. 50 other people died in connection with the virus. This increases the number of reported deaths to 125,571.
However, the figures are only of limited significance. Experts assume a high number of cases that are not recorded in the RKI data. Test capacities and health authorities are at the limit in many places, contacts are only traced to a limited extent. That is why we use the SZ Corona Dashboard to show an average value from the reports of the past seven days, which is intended to compensate for fluctuations from day to day.
You can find more information on this in the transparency blog, further data and graphics on the pandemic here. (03/11/2022)
Government wants to relax corona protection regulations in companies
Despite the increasing number of infections, looser corona rules should apply in Germany’s companies in a week from the beginning of spring. The draft regulation of the Federal Ministry of Labor provides that employers themselves should assess the risk of the virus and define appropriate measures in a company hygiene concept. The draft is available to the German Press Agency.
Employers should also take regional infection rates into account. According to the draft, they should then check whether they offer employees a corona test per week, whether they provide protective masks and whether employees should work in the home office. In the future, companies should also decide for themselves on protective measures such as distance and hygiene rules or the obligation to wear a mask.
Up to and including March 19, employers are still obliged to offer tests in their companies at least twice a week. Where other measures do not provide sufficient protection, there is currently also a mask requirement. In addition to these rules, company 3G regulations apply, according to which employees must carry proof of vaccinations, convalescence or test certificates. Home office is mandatory if the type of work allows it. It is planned that the new regulation will be passed in the cabinet on Wednesday. (03/12/2022)
Thousands of people are demonstrating in the southwest against corona measures
In several cities in the southwest, thousands of people gathered again on Saturday for demonstrations against the corona measures. In Crailsheim (Schwäbisch Hall district), according to a police spokesman, around 1,700 people took to the streets by the early afternoon – around 5,000 people were registered. In Kehl, the participants set off from the train station under the motto “Freedom or Slavery” and walked through the city. A police spokesman was initially unable to say how many people were demonstrating. According to the information, there were no incidents.
As on the Saturdays in the previous weeks, many opponents of the Corona measures also gathered in Freiburg – how many exactly should not be known until the evening. The number of registered around 2000 people will probably not be reached, said a police spokesman. Around 4 p.m., an elevator with around 7,000 registered participants should start in Reutlingen. (03/12/2022)
Lauterbach wants to cancel the special corona payments for panel doctors
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) apparently wants to have the special corona regulations for panel doctors deleted. This emerges from a letter from the minister to the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians dated March 3, reports the image. The letter says: “Taking into account the stable situation in the intensive care units, an overload of the health system is currently no longer to be expected.” Therefore, special payments for, for example, extra protective equipment or the operation of the Corona hotline should be phased out. Lauterbach also points to a significantly milder course at Omicron. (03/12/2022)
China has reported the highest number of infections in over two years
China’s daily corona infection numbers have reached the highest level since the end of the first wave of the pandemic in Wuhan two years ago. On Saturday, the National Health Commission reported 1,524 local infections nationwide, including 1,048 asymptomatic cases.
The northeast Chinese metropolis of Changchun was only sent into a lockdown on Friday after several hundred corona infections. As the authorities there announced, only one person per household is allowed to leave the apartment every two days to go shopping. All of the approximately nine million residents of the city should be tested for the virus.
After the first major wave of corona in Wuhan, China was able to quickly bring the virus under control with strict measures. Since then, the People’s Republic has adhered to an epidemiological zero-tolerance strategy with strict measures. In the last two years, there have only been locally limited lines of infection with a few cases, which were quickly contained through lockdowns and mass tests. But since omicron was first discovered in the eastern Chinese port city of Tianjin at the beginning of January, health experts have feared that the more contagious corona variant could push Chinese protective measures to their limits. (03/12/2022)
Mask requirement in school should fall everywhere
The Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) has agreed on a uniform way out of the school Corona measures. At the beginning of April, the mask requirement in schools should be ended, said Hamburg Education Senator Ties Rabe (SPD) at the end of a KMK conference in Lübeck. The random tests would end in May. After two years of the pandemic, children and young people should experience normal school operations again in the summer, added the Hessian Minister of Education Alexander Lorz (CDU). “But we can’t all say what it will look like in the fall.”
The German Teachers’ Association had previously warned against the abolition of the mask requirement. Instead of opening plans by the federal government, a postponement or even withdrawal of easing steps should be considered, said association president Heinz-Peter Meidinger Rheinische Post. “As a teachers’ association, we expect an even more colorful and rationally hardly comprehensible patchwork of corona protection in schools in view of the future exclusive responsibility of the federal states for protective measures in schools.”
The Federal Association of Physicians in the Public Health Service (BVÖGD) is now calling for the occupational vaccination requirement to be extended to include teachers. “If we relax the mask requirement in school, it is all the more important that the adults are vaccinated,” said Vice President of the Association Elke Bruns-Philipps Rheinische Post. “One way would be to extend institutional vaccination requirements to teachers and educators, although many of them are already vaccinated. Adults can protect themselves and their children by being vaccinated.” (03/11/2022)
Lauterbach: “The situation is objectively much worse than the mood”
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) considers the current corona situation to be critical. “The situation is objectively much worse than the mood,” he said at a press conference in Berlin. There is a widespread feeling among the population and in politics that Corona is no longer a problem because the omicron variant of the pathogen is not that bad. Lauterbach warns that this is wrong. It is not only dangerous for the unvaccinated. Those who have been vaccinated could also become seriously ill and suffer long-term damage to their health. In the medium term, the current sharp rise in the number of infections is also likely to put a strain on hospitals, and the number of corona deaths could also rise again. The health minister says that 200 to 250 people are already dying every day. This is an “unsustainable situation”.
Lauterbach defended the new infection protection law planned by the federal government. The possibilities provided for the countries to continue to impose corona measures are sufficient if they are used, he said. The new law is “only as good as the state parliaments apply it”. In the future, in addition to a mask and test requirement in a few areas, further protective measures will only be possible in so-called hotspots, i.e. in areas where the number of infections is high and the hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed. This could also be entire federal states, said Lauterbach – and he expects many such hotspots. “We will have to implement this law very quickly.”
The previous legal basis for corona measures by the federal states expires at the weekend, so the Bundestag is supposed to pass the new law on Friday. Contrary to popular belief, schools could still be required to wear masks in hotspots, said Lauterbach. He announced that the free rapid corona tests for everyone (“citizen tests”) would continue to exist. The federal government bears the costs for this. (03/11/2022)
Possibly three times as many Covid deaths worldwide as registered
The pandemic may have cost significantly more lives worldwide than previously thought. According to a recent study, 18.2 million more people died between January 2020 and December 2021 than would have been expected in non-pandemic years. Only 5.9 million corona deaths were officially recorded during this period. “Our results indicate that the full impact of the pandemic was much greater than official statistics suggest,” writes the international research team led by Haidong Wang from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle in the journal The Lancet.
According to the models, 120 out of 100,000 people worldwide died as a result of Corona, and the mortality rate in 21 countries was more than 300. The scientists found the highest rates in the Andean countries in Latin America (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, 512 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), in Eastern Europe (former European Soviet republics and all of Russia, 345) and Central Europe (from Poland to Albania, 316) and in sub-Saharan Africa (309). In some countries such as Iceland or Australia, however, according to estimates, even fewer people died in the pandemic years than would have been statistically expected.
The sometimes large differences between the registered and the actual number of deaths are probably due to a lack of diagnoses due to a lack of tests and problems with reporting the numbers. (03/11/2022)