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Health Minister Spahn sees signs of a positive change in the corona infection situation. In fact, the growth of new infections is weakening. But the number of deaths is increasing.
By Patrick Gensing, Editorial Office of ARD-faktenfinder
The dynamics of the infection process have been “significantly reduced” in recent days, Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said on RTL. It is still increasing, “but it is increasing less rapidly.” That’s encouraging, “but it’s not enough,” Spahn said. It is still too early to speak of a “turnaround”.
In fact, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the number of new infections increased by 18,487 nationwide in one day. That’s 3,155 more cases than Tuesday. Compared to Wednesday of last week (17,214), the value is slightly higher. Growth is clearly weakening compared to the previous weeks. This can also be seen in the replay value, which according to the RKI is now less than one.
Several factors can influence
Whether the weakened growth is the result of restrictions on public life in early November is a matter of controversy among experts. Virologist Christian Drosten said in the NDR-Podcastthat can only be speculated at the moment. For a week it has become apparent that the growth rate is slowing down. That is a good sign. This change could have to do, for example, with a change in mobility that was triggered by political calls in mid-October. According to Drosten, the mobility figures suggest this conclusion. In this context he referred to the speech of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
However, according to Drosten, a connection to the fall holidays is also conceivable in many federal states. Children and families may have stayed home longer during this time. But all this is still speculation. It is also possible that overhead in initiating and evaluating testing and monitoring sources of infection led to a decoupling of actual events from recorded numbers.
Modified test strategy
A SWR-The data analysis reaches a similar conclusion: since the testing strategy has changed, not all potentially infected people have been tested since last week. This means, for example, that general practitioners no longer send patients with coughs or other respiratory illnesses for a suspected coronavirus test. Only those who, for example, work in a medical profession or have had direct contact with an infected person are tested.
If you exclude the symptom-free and other suspected cases from the past few weeks, according to the SWR, it would currently be estimated at more than 2,000 fewer cases per day in the statistics than before across the country. Those who tested positive “disappear” back into the unreported number and will no longer be recorded in the future. This would make it possible for the curve to only go down somewhat on the paper.
Significantly more deaths
The evolution of the number of deaths, which increased by 261 to a total of 11,767, is less positive. That is the highest value since the end of April. Therefore, Health Minister Spahn also emphasized that despite the glimmer of hope of new infections, one had to be prepared for an increasing number of intensive care bed occupancies and deaths. This effect follows the sharp increase in the number of delayed infections, because a certain percentage of those infected have to go to the hospital and some die if the disease progresses very seriously.
Experts expect a delay of several weeks, that is to say, in a nutshell, the current death toll is mainly due to new infections a month ago, when this number was around 4,000. After that, the numbers skyrocketed.
More patients in intensive care units
The RKI also reported Tuesday that the number of Covid 19 cases treated in intensive care has more than doubled in the past two weeks from 1,470 patients to 3,059. However, growth apparently weakened with new admissions, if observed. the figures from the intensive registration DIVI. The same applies to the growth in the total number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care units as of November 2.
This means that the intensive care units are still filling up, but more slowly than previously feared. Clemens Wendtner, chief physician for infectious diseases and head of the special unit for life-threatening highly contagious infections at the Schwabing Clinic in Munich, believes that it is still too early to draw final conclusions. Only the rate of increase in intensive care patients throughout the day decreased slightly, but in absolute terms there was still an increase in patients in intensive care units. At the level of normal wards there is no “change in trend, that is, the number of patients who must be treated is continuously increasing.”
Beds alone are useless
Wendtner emphasized that the situation in neighboring countries should be a warning: “Even in the beginning there was only a slow occupation of intensive care capacities in late summer before the system with regard to intensive care beds now appears overloaded in November”. Experts also repeatedly point out that the number of beds alone is of little informational value without adequate staffing.
Dr. Matthias Kochanek, head of internal intensive care medicine at the University Hospital Cologne, says that the active ingredient dexamethasone might have shortened the time in the intensive care unit a bit. “But it is certainly too early to draw reliable conclusions from the current figures,” he stressed. He also believes that the numbers in the DIVI registry could be up to 20 percent off, for example in terms of the number of empty beds or ventilation beds. “If you look at the hospitals alone here in Cologne, for example, two free intensive care beds are reported, but five free ventilation options.”
Several factors play a role
Therefore, the individual figures certainly give hope that the situation will improve. But it is still too early to make an informed assessment. According to experts, several factors influence the causes of such changes. And there is a risk that the modified testing strategy will illuminate the statistics in a smaller bright field and increase the number of unreported cases.
