After years of the pandemic, Corona seems almost forgotten. Hardly anyone wears a mask in the supermarket, on the train or elsewhere in public – even if their nose is running or their throat is scratchy. But how is the Corona situation developing in Germany? The current report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) summarizes the most important findings.
The number of laboratory-confirmed corona infections in Germany continues to rise. So far, around 13,130 cases have been reported last week, after around 12,900 and around 10,000 in the previous two weeks. This emerges from the new weekly report from the Influenza Working Group at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). An increase has been observed since around the beginning of July.
According to the report, the corona variant EG.5 (also called Eris) was found in almost half of the samples that tested positive at the beginning of October. It therefore still has the largest share of all detected corona variants. The heavily mutated variant BA.2.86 (Pirola) was only present in two percent of the samples analyzed.
Overall, according to the RKI, the activity of respiratory diseases increased in the past week compared to the previous week. This affected children as well as adults. According to estimates, there were around 1.4 million doctor’s visits for this reason, also an increase compared to the comparable period. It was said that values could change even more due to subsequent reports after the autumn holidays.
RKI President Lars Schaade recently told “Zeit” that he “doesn’t see any situation facing us at the moment that would be even remotely comparable to previous years.” The population has now built up broad immunity through vaccinations and infections. We now have another respiratory pathogen that can have special features such as long-term consequences (Long Covid), but which will no longer have a major impact on most people.
The actual number of cases is higher than the official reported numbers. It can be assumed that laboratory tests for Sars-CoV-2 will primarily be carried out on those who are more seriously ill. Tests for virus variants are also no longer as frequent as they were during the peak phases of the pandemic.
Sources: DPA, RKI ARE weekly report, “Die Zeit”.
