Despite the increased number of corona infections, head of panel doctors Andreas Gassen spoke out against the extension of the mask requirement and against the continuation of citizen tests without cause. “The narrative was always that the health system should not be overloaded,” said the chairman of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians to the editorial network Germany (RND) before deliberations at the Conference of Health Ministers this Wednesday and Thursday.
Although there are now high numbers of infections, the course of the disease is mostly mild. “Many of those affected do not even notice it.” Therefore, higher infection numbers alone could not be the basis for measures, “e.g. for a renewed mask requirement”.
The department heads meet in Magdeburg. Mouth and nose protection must currently still be worn in everyday life, especially on public transport. Gassen also called for a timely stop to unprovoked citizen tests. “They bring very little and cost a lot,” he criticized. “Instead, we should focus on PCR testing in symptomatic patients.”
The Hamburg virologist Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit warned against overestimating the effect of the masks. Correctly worn FFP2 masks could protect against infection, but other measures are more efficient and should be introduced before masks become mandatory. The virologist mentioned home office to the RND. “If the efficiency of a mask requirement for fighting the pandemic is low, the millions of euros for masks would be better spent elsewhere,” said Schmidt-Chanasit.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) meanwhile gave the nationwide seven-day incidence on Wednesday morning as 488.7. This is evident from numbers that reflect the status of the RKI dashboard at 3:13 a.m. The day before, the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 458.5 (previous week: 472.4; previous month: 322.4).
However, the incidence does not provide a complete picture of the infection situation. Experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI – mainly because by far not all infected people have a PCR test done. Only positive PCR tests count in the statistics. In addition, late registrations or transmission problems can lead to a distortion of individual daily values.
The health authorities in Germany recently reported 119,232 new corona infections (previous week: 92,344) and 104 deaths (previous week: 112) to the RKI within one day. Here, too, comparisons of the data are only possible to a limited extent due to the test behavior, late registrations or transmission problems.
