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The situation of the crown in Germany is getting worse. The number of new infections has reached a new record. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced that 19,990 new cases were recorded in 24 hours.
The RKI reported last Saturday the previous maximum value with 19,059 cases. On Thursday a week ago, the number was 16,774. The number of deaths increased 118 to a total of 10,930.
The current infection figures are only partially comparable to those of the spring, as many more tests are now underway and more infections are being discovered as a result.
In late September, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) warned that there could be 19,200 new infections a day by Christmas. This value was almost exceeded at the end of October.
R value below 1
The number of views, or the R-value for short, was 0.81 according to RKI’s management report on Wednesday. Therefore, an infected person infects slightly less than another person on average. The R value represents the infection rate approximately one and a half weeks earlier. For comparison: the day before it was 0.94.
In addition, the RKI includes the so-called seven-day R in its management report. The value refers to a longer period of time and is therefore less subject to daily fluctuations. According to RKI estimates, this value was 0.92 on Wednesday.
Labs can’t keep up with testing
In view of the increasing number of corona, more and more laboratories cannot keep up with the evaluation of the tests. In the last calendar week, 69 laboratories reported a backlog of a total of 98,931 samples to be processed to the RKI. Two weeks earlier there were 52 laboratories with 20,799 samples to process. According to the RKI, 55 labs recently drew attention to delivery issues. They lack reagents to evaluate tests, plastic consumables, and pipette tips, among other things.
In recent weeks there has been an increase in reports of labs being at the limit of their usability, writes the RKI. “As the number of samples increases, as can be seen today due to the wide range of indications, the average processing times also increase.”
Those affected can be informed of the results later, and notification to the health department could also be delayed. Therefore, it is “urgently necessary” to prioritize the use of tests.
In the last two months, the number of corona tests in Germany has increased by more than 400,000 per week. 191 laboratories recently reported about 1.6 million such laboratory tests in one week. It is currently around 7.3 percent, at the end of August it was 0.7 percent.
