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Thursday 17 December 2020
To update
Numbers corrected up
RKI counts more than 30,000 cases for the first time
The number of deaths reported by the Robert Koch Institute remains high. In one day, the authority recorded nearly 700 deaths across the country. The number of new infections has reached a new record.
Technical problems with the transfer of data from Baden-Württemberg have again affected the official case count at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The RKI reported 26,923 new infections in the morning, officially a little less than the day before, but significantly more than Thursday a week ago.
However, overall, the current daily increases are likely to be significantly higher than those indicated by the RKI. In the morning, it was initially unclear how reliable the number of cases is in the RKI statistics: the slight decrease the day before was apparently mainly due to the surprisingly low number of cases from Baden-Württemberg.
The daily increase was calculated by the RKI in 645 new cases. That number was well below the average for the past seven days. On average, for several days, there were recently about 2,500 cases per day in Baden-Württemberg. The responsible state authority had given the number of new cases on Wednesday as 4165. When asked by ntv.de, the RKI finally confirmed that there were technical problems.
Yesterday, for “technical reasons”, about 3,500 cases were not transmitted to the RKI from Baden-Württemberg. The problem is now solved, he said in the morning. Cases will be forwarded. In the RKI census, however, they should not be published until Friday.
The situation is completely different: without the failure in the transmission of the Baden-Württemberg data, today there would have been a new record for the number of transmitted cases in the RKI count. According to the available information, the daily increase at the national level would actually be more than 30,000. Authorities have recently learned of as many new infections as never before since the start of the coronavirus outbreak in Germany.
There is no sign of a fundamental change in the number of cases: in Baden-Württemberg, for example, on Wednesday all regions were still well above a seven-day incidence of 100.
RKI Announces Review
Already early in the morning it was suggested that the unusually low number of cases from Baden-Württemberg, as in previous cases, could be related to technical problems with the transmission of data to the RKI. The notable decline in one of Germany’s most populous federal states also had an impact on the national figures. The new infections currently reported by the RKI were 805 cases below the level of the previous day. The number of reports usually increases significantly towards the weekend.
It is not yet clear to what extent the number of reported deaths will have to be subsequently corrected upward. Here, the RKI initially showed a daily increase of twelve cases for Baden-Württemberg. In total, the RKI currently recorded 698 new deaths related to coronavirus infections. This is the second highest value since the beginning of the pandemic.
Nationally, the highest number of 952 deaths had only been recorded the day before. However, one of the reasons for the significant increase was late registrations received from Saxony on Wednesday. The Free State had not transmitted any data on Tuesday.
The number of new registered infection cases reached a previous high of 29,875 reported cases last Friday. The trend in the number of daily deaths had recently increased, which was also expected after the sharp increase in new infections. The total number of people who died with or with a proven Sars-CoV-2 infection rose, according to preliminary data, to 24,125.
The seven-day incidence, the number of new infections reported per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days, which is critical to assessing the situation, was slightly reduced to 179.2. This decrease is mainly due to the data breach in Baden-Württemberg. There, the seven-day incidence reported by the RKI was significantly reduced due to the breakdown.
By Wednesday, the nationwide value had peaked at 179.8. The RKI has counted 1,406,161 proven Sars-CoV-2 infections in Germany since the start of the pandemic. It is estimated that around 1,047,600 people have recovered.
The seven-day national R-value was 0.98 according to RKI’s management report on Wednesday. This means that 100 infected people infect 98 more people. The value represents the onset of the infection 8 to 16 days ago. Only when it is below 1 for a longer period does it decrease.
Note: The RKI figures generally differ slightly from the case data that ntv.de reports daily at night. The data team at ntv.de has direct access to the federal state registration figures published by the ministries and local authorities. The RKI, on the other hand, is subject to legally prescribed reporting channels, which can lead to a delay.
In addition, the respective daily values map different recording periods: the ntv assessment collects the country information published at night and uses it to calculate a daily status of the number of reported cases, which is generally published as of 8 pm The RKI’s recording system, on the other hand, takes into account incoming reports until midnight, and the current status of the data is announced the next morning.
