Since the beginning of the current school year in September, around one in four young schoolchildren in Bavaria has been infected with Corona. This results from the incidence figures published by the State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL). No other age group is more affected. Compared to the total population, it is more than double.
The calculation is based on the incidences by age group published weekly by the LGL. If you add them up, you can calculate the frequency of infections in the age groups. Although the method has the weakness that it does not take into account multiple infections in individuals, epidemiologist and statistician Ursula Berger from the Covid-19 data analysis group at LMU still considers it a useful way of estimating the proportion of children who have been infected since the beginning of the school year . On the one hand, the schools were consistently tested during this time. On the other hand, the proportion of children who were infected several times within this relatively short period of time and were therefore counted several times is probably low, she says. Aging effects, i.e. that some of the children in the group become older than eleven during the period under consideration and thus drop out of the group while other children move up from below, are considered to be rather insignificant in this analysis.
incidence decreases
Since the beginning of the school year, a proportion of 27.4 percent of infected children has been calculated for the age group of six to eleven years, with cumulative incidences. Even if you subtract possible multiple infections, this results in a value in the range of a quarter of this group – also because the majority of infections at 17.4 percent are attributable to the relatively short period of time from calendar week one. The second most affected age group is also of school age: Among the twelve to 15-year-olds, it is almost 22 percent since the beginning of the school year, 13.5 percent of them since the first calendar week. This is followed by the 16 to 19 group with 18.9 percent in the current school year. For comparison: the age groups 60 to 79 and over 80 only have values of 4.9 and 4.3 percent. In the total population it is twelve percent in this period.
In the past week, incidences have been falling slightly in most age groups. With a value of 4,445 new infections per 100,000 people within seven days, six to eleven-year-olds are also the most affected in this analysis. The lowest values are found for the age group from 80. At 551, it is only one eighth of young students. However, the incidence among the elderly is still increasing slightly. The Robert Koch Institute reported an incidence of 1772 across Bavaria on Monday. That is slightly less than on Sunday and the fourth decrease within five days. However, it is currently not clear whether this is already a turnaround in the infection process or the result of an overloaded reporting and testing system. Nationwide, Bavaria currently has the second highest incidence behind Brandenburg.