The corona situation in Germany is getting worse. The number of new infections has reached a new high. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced that 19,990 new cases were registered within 24 hours.
The RKI reported the previous maximum value last Saturday with 19,059 cases. On Thursday a week ago, the number was 16,774. The number of deaths rose 118 to a total of 10,930.
The current infection numbers are only partially comparable with those from the spring, as significantly more tests are now being carried out and more infections are being discovered as a result.
At the end of September, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) warned that there could be 19,200 new infections a day at Christmas. This value was almost exceeded by the end of October.
R-value further below 1
The number of reproductions, or R value for short, was 0.81 according to the RKI management report on Wednesday. One infected person thus infects a little less than another person on average. The R-value depicts the infection rate about one and a half weeks beforehand. For comparison: the day before it was 0.94.
In addition, the RKI gives a so-called seven-day R in its management report. The value relates to a longer period and is therefore less subject to daily fluctuations. According to RKI estimates, this value was 0.92 on Wednesday.
Laboratories cannot keep up with tests
In view of the increasing corona numbers, more and more laboratories are unable to keep up with the evaluation of tests. In the past 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 still 52 laboratories with 20,799 samples to be processed. According to the RKI, 55 laboratories recently drew attention to delivery problems. They lack reagents for evaluating the tests, plastic consumables and pipette tips, among other things.
In the last few weeks there have been increasing reports from laboratories that are very much at the limits of their capacity utilization, writes the RKI. “As the number of samples increases, as can currently be observed due to the wide range of indications, the average processing times also increase.”
Those affected may be informed of the results later, and reporting to the health department could be delayed. It is therefore “urgently necessary” to prioritize the use of the tests.
In the past two months, the number of corona tests in Germany has increased by more than 400,000 per week. 191 laboratories recently reported around 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.
