infection pressure
RKI: declining corona trends – fewer tests before Easter
An employee of a test station takes a smear. Photo: Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
According to the RKI, fewer and fewer PCR tests have recently been carried out in Germany. This is probably related to the Easter holidays. However, the infection pressure remains high despite the falling corona incidence.
Despite declining trends in several corona indicators, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) still sees a high infection pressure in the population.
More than 750,000 Covid 19 cases were reported last week, according to the RKI weekly report on Thursday evening. According to this, the nationwide seven-day incidence has fallen by almost a quarter in a weekly comparison. Key figures on hospital admissions and outbreaks in facilities are also decreasing, it said.
The report also shows that fewer and fewer PCR tests have recently been carried out in more than 200 laboratories nationwide, on which the official statistics are based: after the number had been significantly more than 2 million per week in March, it was a week before Easter only around 1.1 million. The significant decline is also partly due to the Good Friday holiday, writes the RKI. According to the report, more than every second test (around 55 percent) was positive, which is about as much as in March. Priority is given to testing people with symptoms.
Experts: Many unrecorded cases
Experts have been assuming that many unrecorded cases have been going on for some time – due to overworked health authorities and because positive rapid tests are not always followed by a laboratory test. On Thursday, Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach confirmed that there are currently around twice as many cases as are officially reported. The Federal Association of Doctors in the Public Health Service also mentioned this magnitude.
In the report, the RKI once again emphasizes that it is neither possible nor necessary to record every individual case in the reporting system. The overall development can also be reliably estimated thanks to other data taken into account.