New corona infections: The boys are catching up

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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New corona infections are increasing, especially among younger people. The average age of those infected has dropped significantly.

The number of known new infections with the corona virus in Germany has increased significantly again. After months of relaxation, it is now at the level from the beginning of May - but now more and more young people are getting infected.

The average age of those infected fell to 34 years last week. That is "the lowest average age since the beginning" of the pandemic, said Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) on Thursday in the ZDF "Morgenmagazin". For comparison: in April it was still around 50 years.

"Be vigilant"

Spahn pointed out that because of the younger age of the infected, there are now less severe courses of Covid 19 disease. But he warned: "That still means to be very, very vigilant with one another, because there can be the most difficult processes and even deaths - if we are not careful, in the family, among friends, at work." In addition, younger people could People infect older people, for example their parents and grandparents or hospital patients and residents of old people's homes as home staff.

The day before, Spahn had warned against parties or carelessness at events with a large number of people. Younger people are more mobile than older people and may therefore become infected more often after the relaxation of contact and travel restrictions.

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the health authorities reported 1,445 new corona infections within one day by Wednesday evening. The value was last higher on May 1, when 1,639 new infections were registered.

More tests, more infection reports

According to the RKI, however, the number of tests carried out has also increased significantly: while in the week from July 27 to August 2, it was just under 578,000 (transmitted by 165 laboratories), the number in the following week was already more than 672 000 (transmitted by 139 laboratories). The values ​​can still change in the course of late registrations, and multiple tests of individual people can also be included.

The rate of positive tests for Sars-CoV-2 was 1 percent in both weeks - since some people are tested multiple times, this value does not mean that 1 percent of those tested are Sars-CoV-2 positive. In the week from April 27 to May 3, the number of tests had been around 327,000 (transmitted by 175 laboratories). The positive rate was 3.9 percent.

According to the RKI, this rate is most likely to say something about how effective the test strategy is. "A low percentage shows that there is broad testing". Increasingly, people with mild symptoms are also included.

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