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The current trend does not bode well: the RKI reports significantly more deaths per crown than a month ago. The peak of new reported infections appears to have been passed. How does that fit in?
Germany is in the middle of the second wave of pandemics. However, there were no dire reports of hundreds of corona deaths per day, at least so far. Because between June and mid-October, significantly fewer deaths per day from Covid 19 were reported in Germany than in the spring: mostly less than ten, on some days even none. Experts even speculated that the coronavirus could have weakened. But since October, the number of new infections has risen rapidly, and now so have deaths. More recently, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 305 new corona deaths in 24 hours. And that’s even though the federal states are again registering fewer and fewer new infections. How does that fit in?
It takes time for more patients to die from a new wave of infections. Fatal Covid-19 illnesses take 16-18 days from symptom onset to death, the RKI writes on its website. It usually takes several days before sick people are admitted to the hospital. And with intensive care measures, Covid 19 patients can stay alive for weeks and often even save themselves. Therefore, the sudden increase in infections, as in October, is followed only with a delay by an increase in the number of deaths.
However, an increase in deaths was foreseeable due to the increasing number of Covid 19 patients in intensive care units. Since mid-October, more and more people have had to receive intensive care: just over four weeks ago there were 655 patients. Meanwhile, their number has more than quintupled to around 3,400. At the moment, more sick people are being treated than in the spring. At that time, in April, only up to 2,922 patients received intensive care at the same time.
The age of the infected plays an important role
And the peak has yet to be reached: Intensive care physicians don’t expect the number of patients in intensive care units to peak for the next three to five weeks. If they have to be hooked up to a ventilator, they only have a 50 percent chance of survival. Because the RKI assumes that approximately every second artificially ventilated intensive care patient dies with Covid-19.
So it could happen that, despite the decline in the number of new infections, more and more people are dying at the moment. Because, as with the first wave, there is also a big problem: “Currently, diseases among older people are increasing. Since they more often have a severe course of Covid-19, the number of severe cases and deaths it is also increasing, “he says in the RKI management report. Almost 13,000 people aged 80 and over have tested positive for the virus since early November.
In late summer, on the other hand, it was mainly the younger people who were infected and rarely became seriously ill. Covid-19 is particularly fatal when older people become infected: about 85 percent of the people who died from or with the coronavirus were over 70 years old, 95 percent of them were over 60 years old. Most deaths were reported in the 80-90 age group.
A research group at the Max Planck Institute warned two weeks ago that many more people will die in connection with a corona infection in November. The scientists analyzed the increase in new infections reported by age group and determined from the mortality observed in the respective age fraction how the number of deaths from Covid-19 was developing. Their result: The number of deaths should rise to 800 a week in the next few weeks, probably even more.
Crown buds in nursing homes
Therefore, if people in the older age groups can be protected, a general increase in the number of infections does not always have to lead to more deaths. But recently, reports of corona outbreaks in nursing homes and senior centers have increased. A nursing home in Berlin-Lichtenberg was particularly affected. 14 residents who tested positive died there, and 13 more infected people must be treated in hospitals.
And Bavaria also reports a particularly high number of deaths in relation to the corona virus. The death toll in official crown statistics rose to a total of 3,193 in the Free State on Tuesday, as announced by the State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL). According to the RKI, this number is the largest in the Free State not only in relation to the number of inhabitants in a federal state comparison, but also in absolute terms. “In Bavaria, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, outbreaks occurred in nursing homes and nursing homes, thus the most vulnerable groups of people were affected,” said an LGL spokesman. Diseases among the elderly are on the rise again here.
According to the RKI, a sharp increase in deaths can only be avoided if current measures slow down the spread of Sars-CoV-2.
