Dhe ebbing of the omicron wave this summer is now also evident in the severe corona diseases. “These data consistently show that the peak of the current wave has been passed, even in the case of severe illnesses,” says the weekly report of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Covid-19 on Thursday evening. The authors describe declining trends in the number of patients with Covid-19 in German intensive care units and in Covid-19 diagnoses.
The nationwide 7-day incidence fell by 12 percentage points to 314 in calendar week 33 compared to the previous week. The number of people in intensive care units due to a Covid 19 infection also fell to 902. In the previous week it was 1074. A random sample of analyzed positive cases shows that the omicron subline BA.5 is still responsible for infections almost exclusively.
“Despite the overall further decline in the number of cases, the infection pressure in the general population remains high in all age groups,” warns the RKI. Despite the improved operating situation in recent weeks, the burden on the health system remains high. A high number of hospital admissions, Covid 19 intensive care patients and deaths are expected to continue in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday that a million people had already died as a result of a corona infection since the beginning of the year. “We have passed the tragic milestone of one million deaths from Covid-19 since the beginning of the year,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. The WHO is urging governments to step up vaccinations as a third of the world’s population is still unvaccinated In particular, countries should redouble their efforts to vaccinate all healthcare workers, the elderly and other people at high risk, Tedros said, with a target of 70 percent vaccination coverage for the entire population.
He warned that a third of the world’s population is still unvaccinated, including two-thirds of health workers and three-quarters of the elderly in low-income countries. According to the latest WHO statistics, the corona pandemic is responsible for 6.45 million deaths worldwide since the first cases appeared in the Wuhan region of China in late 2019.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has also announced that it will be easier to prescribe the corona drug Paxlovid in the future. In addition to vaccination, the drug should become a second mainstay in the fight against the pandemic, as Lauterbach told the “Spiegel”. General practitioners should therefore have Paxlovid in stock in their practice and be able to give it directly to patients instead of having to go to the pharmacy as before. So far, general practitioners in Germany have been very hesitant about prescribing the drug – even though international studies emphasize the effectiveness of Paxlovid.