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Every Thursday a record: if you look at the number of new infections in Germany, you might get the impression that a particularly large number of people were infected in the middle of the week. While the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported nearly 7,500 new infections on Wednesday, there were more than 11,000 on Thursday, more than ever. Also in recent weeks, the number of cases skyrocketed since Thursday. What will happen in Germany at the end of the week? Is everyone looking forward to the weekend and not following the rules anymore?
If you want to read the statistics correctly, you should know: The RKI does not indicate how many people were infected in one day, but how many new infections the health authorities have reported to the RKI. Therefore, the figures also include cases that have been known in recent days or even weeks. The RKI notes this in each publication. (You can read more about crown stats here.)
Therefore, the number of new infections reported per day alone is not very significant. However, it is a warning sign. Because other parameters also point in one direction: up.
In the past seven days, three times more new infections have been transmitted to the RKI than two weeks ago, RKI President Lothar Wieler said at a press conference Thursday. The 7-day incidence in Germany has risen to an average of 56.2 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, two weeks ago it was 20.2, at the beginning of June only three. The number of Covid 19 patients in intensive care units has also doubled in the past two weeks.
That is the complicated thing about exponential growth, initially it seems harmless and then it displays its full force. What happens then has already been demonstrated in Germany’s neighboring countries:
Is Germany lagging behind other countries?
Reinhard Busse from TU Berlin recently compared the figures for Germany with the figures for Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Spain in a briefing at the Science Media Center. According to this, in mid-October, Germany was roughly on par with the Netherlands and Belgium about five weeks earlier. Since then, the number of new infections reported in Belgium has increased almost 13 times.
If Germany continues this development, the seven-day incidence in this country could rise to 400 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants by mid-November. Around 16,000 Covid-19 patients would have to go to hospital, 2,700 would need intensive care.
The health system would probably not be overloaded then. In the calculation of the model described by Busse, Covid-19 patients would only use three percent of hospital beds and ten percent of intensive care beds. “But if it increases indefinitely, the beds will also get more and more crowded,” Busse said.
RKI President Wieler warned Thursday not to downplay the crown crisis with a view to the hospital beds that were still available. “If we just look at these numbers, we look back at three to four weeks,” Wieler said. The reason: time passes between infection, a positive test, and a difficult hospital course. In other words, people who are infected now probably won’t show up in hospital statistics for a few weeks.
“The virus cannot be stopped overnight,” Wieler said. The ultimate goal should be for as few people as possible to die. Germany could still avoid a development similar to that of neighboring countries.
