Germany hits new COVID record, amid debate on what next

Germany's Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases reported a new record-high of daily COVID-19 cases on Friday, with 248,838 people infected within the past 24 hours. 

That's 58,690 more cases than reported on the previous Friday: 190,148 infections. 

The seven-day incidence rate also increased to a new record, 1,349.5 cases per 100,000 people per week.

The new figures come amid increased calls for relaxing current measures put in place to curb the spread of the omicron wave — but also calls for caution.

Some states in Germany are set to relax certain restrictions in the next days. Those include the eastern state of Saxony, the northern Schleswig-Holstein state and the central state of Hesse.

Retailers had sued the governments in those states over the 2G rule, which requires customers to show proof of vaccination or recovery to enter shops that are deemed non-essential. 

A 'freedom plan' the next priority?

Andreas Gassen, the head of Germany's National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), is among the voices calling for political plans to ease COVID-19 restrictions. 

"What we need now is a freedom plan — a parameter-based plan for how we can gradually loosen [restrictions]," Gassen told the Friday edition of the Düsseldorf-based Rheinische Post. 

The KBV chief said stadiums should soon be allowed to open for more people, and that the so-called 2G rule would "soon" not be necessary.

Gassen said that Germany needed to learn to live with and adapt to the coronavirus, saying it was a "misconception" to think the end of the pandemic would be marked by nobody dying of COVID-19 anymore.

"[COVID-19] is likely to remain a permanent part of the disease process," he said. 

Just like with influenza, there are always new variants and in some years even tens of thousands of deaths in Germany, Gassen said, "We have to accept that [with COVID-19] as well and, at the same time, continue to offer vaccinations for high-risk groups."

Premature loosening could lead to 'a rollercoaster ride' 

Meanwhile, the president of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) Gernot Marx warned that Germany could suffer a "rollercoaster ride" in the number of COVID cases if measures were eased too soon. 

"Relaxation of the coronavirus measures, as some federal states have now announced, come too early," Marx told the newspapers in the Funke media group. 

Marx said some measures had helped slow down the omicron wave, compared to other countries, warning that this success should not be put at risk. "The federal government and the states should wait until the infection figures decline stably over several days before doing so. It would be fatal if we got into a roller coaster ride with infection numbers rising again by relaxing too early," he said. 

fb/msh (epd, Reuters)