German health minister warns of 'summer wave'

 Health Minister Lauterbach also expects a possible corona wave in the summer. The virus could “keep us busy for a long time – a decade or more”. The RKI reported an increasing incidence for the third day in a row.

On Friday, protective measures were relaxed nationwide, affecting restaurants, discotheques and events in particular. However, these regulations will already expire on March 19th. Because only up to this point in time does the Infection Protection Act allow the previous corona restrictions. The federal and state governments agree in principle that there should continue to be a certain basic protection from March 20th. However, there is still no agreement on its exact form. 

Lauterbach said countries must have the ability to respond early to the coming waves. These included the mask requirement and contact restrictions: "It should be possible to set upper limits for private meetings and public events as well as access rules for restaurants, for example, i.e. 2G or 2G Plus regulations." The instruments should only be used when they are actually necessary. 

The Minister of Health believes it is possible that the corona virus will remain for several decades: "I'm pretty sure that we'll get an autumn wave. And Corona will keep us busy for a long time after that - a decade or more." He pointed out that the HIV virus appeared 40 years ago - "and it's still there". Lauterbach said: "We always have to reckon with corona variants, and there can also be dangerous variants."

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported an increase in the nationwide seven-day incidence for the third day in a row. Accordingly, the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 1220.8. For comparison: the day before the value was 1196.4. A week ago, the nationwide incidence was 1253.3 (previous month: 1388.0).

The health authorities in Germany reported 192,210 new corona infections to the RKI within one day (previous week 175,833). Experts assume a high number of cases that are not recorded in the RKI data. One reason is the limited capacity of health authorities, for example, and contacts are often only tracked to a limited extent. In addition, according to the ALM laboratory association, there is now a larger number of people whose infection is no longer confirmed by a PCR test - these infections are therefore not included in the official statistics.

According to the new information, 255 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours. A week ago there were 250 deaths. The number of corona-infected patients who came to clinics per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days was 6.35 on Friday. Among them are many people with a positive corona test who have another main illness.

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/lauterbach-corona-rki-101.html