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The current closure rules in Germany should apply until January 10, the federal and state governments announced in mid-December. But there probably won’t be a lot of relaxation on the second Monday of the new year. The »FAS« reports that the federal states have already agreed to extend the measures. In particular, the federal states most affected by the coronavirus pandemic are, therefore, until January 31, as is the federal government. While the least affected federal states were considering reopening daycare centers and schools through seventh grade, the others wanted to keep them closed.
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) asked the “RTL Aktuell” program to continue the shutdown. The federal and state governments will discuss how to proceed Tuesday.
Far from the goal
As a reminder: when the federal and state governments agreed to stricter measures on December 13, they also formulated a goal that the shutdown should achieve: bring the number of reported infections per week to a maximum of 50 per 100,000 residents. .
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) daily status report from 12/13/2018. showed a seven-day incidence of 169 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. According to the RKI, 395 of 412 circles were above the target of 50 per 100,000.
In the January 2 management report, 390 out of 412 circles are still above this seven-day incidence. The national average is 140 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The current figures may underestimate the real situation, as fewer people may have visited the doctor’s office due to holidays, fewer laboratory tests were performed, and health authorities may not have passed on all the data.
Germany is still a long way from achieving its goal. And the effect that relaxation during Christmas days will have on the infection rate will only be seen in the next few days. In the current management report, the RKI also writes that the R value is »around 1«. This means that, on average, each person infected with Sars-CoV-2 infects a different person. Containment can only be successful if the value falls below one, so gradually fewer people get infected.
In December, researchers set a more ambitious target than the value of 50 new cases per week per 100,000 people: they set a target value of a maximum of 10 new infections per million inhabitants per day (corresponding to 7 cases per 100,000 per week) for all of Europe. . If the number of cases is only low, clearly noticeable relaxation is possible.