Corona in Germany: RKI removes 19 travel countries from the risk list

On Sunday (February 20th, 2022), the RKI reported a slowly falling incidence and 118,000 new corona infections. In addition, some countries are no longer high-risk areas.

Update from Sunday, February 20th, 2022, 1:39 p.m .: The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has removed 19 countries from the list of corona high-risk areas. The change from Friday will take effect this Sunday (02/20/2022). These include Spain including the Balearic and Canary Islands, Ireland, Tunisia and the USA. Relaxed measures now apply to travelers from these countries. However, there is a general obligation to provide proof for all returnees. “This means that people aged 6 and over must have a negative test result, proof of vaccination or proof of recovery when entering the country,” says the RKI. It applies regardless of whether you have stayed in a high-risk area.

According to the RKI, popular holiday countries such as Egypt and almost all EU countries are still among the high-risk areas: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Finland, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania , Sweden, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Cyprus.

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Corona in Germany: Minister for Family Affairs wants vaccinations to be compulsory from June 18

Update from Sunday, February 20th, 2022, 10.55 a.m .: Federal Minister for Family Affairs Anne Spiegel (Greens) considers the introduction of compulsory corona vaccination from the age of 18 to be urgently necessary. “We tried a lot to reach people through vaccination campaigns and low-threshold offers. But we’ve now reached the end of the road,” Spiegel told Bild am Sonntag. In order to increase the vaccination rate, “we need compulsory vaccination from the age of 18.”

For Spiegel, the declining number of infections is no reason to move away from the planned compulsory vaccination: “We must not be fooled by the declining number of cases, but must expect that dangerous mutations will also be on the way in the future. They can give us a difficult autumn and winter if we don’t significantly increase the vaccination rate.”

By the end of March, the Bundestag should decide whether the corona vaccination requirement in Germany will be extended. Such an obligation applies to staff in health and care facilities from mid-March. According to the Robert Koch Institute, 75.1 percent of the population in Germany was basic immunized up to and including Thursday. 56.1 percent had also received a booster vaccination.

Corona case numbers: 118,000 new infections in Germany – incidence falls slightly

First report from Sunday, February 20th, 2022: Berlin – The nationwide seven-day incidence has fallen again. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants per week on Sunday morning as 1346.3. For comparison: On Saturday the corona incidence was 1350.4. A week ago, the nationwide incidence was 1466.5 (previous month: 638.8).

The health authorities in Germany reported 118,032 new corona infections to the RKI within one day. This is evident from numbers that reflect the status of the RKI dashboard at 5 a.m. A week ago there were 125,160 infections.

Corona case numbers in Germany: experts assume a high number of unreported cases

Experts assume a high number of cases that are not recorded in the RKI data. Test capacities and health authorities are therefore at the limit in many places, and contacts are only tracked to a limited extent. In addition, there is likely to be a larger number of people who no longer have their infection confirmed by a PCR test – the infection is therefore not included in the official statistics.

According to the new information, 73 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours. A week ago there were 58 deaths. The RKI has counted 13,563,126 infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic. The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher, as many infections go undetected.

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The number of corona-infected patients who came to clinics per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days was 6.24 according to the RKI on Friday (Thursday: 5.97). Among them are many people with a positive corona test who have another main illness. The value is not reported on weekends. The RKI gave the number of recovered people on Sunday as 9,673,700. The number of people who died from or involved a proven infection with Sars-CoV-2 rose to 121,275. (lrg/kke/dpa)

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