New record for infection numbers

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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The number of new infections has reached a new high despite the partial lockdown. The health authorities reported 23,648 new corona infections to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) within 24 hours. Chancellor Merkel is hoping that vaccines will be approved soon.

More than two weeks after the partial lockdown began in Germany, the number of corona infections is still rising. RKI boss Lothar Wieler also emphasized on Thursday in Berlin that the situation is still very serious. "The total number of cases is very high. Much too high."

High numbers despite partial lockdown

Even compared to the previous week, the numbers were slightly higher. Last Friday, the number of new infections reported was 23,542. The hoped-for turnaround with a significant drop in the number of cases was therefore not achieved.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the RKI has counted a total of 879,564 detected infections with Sars-CoV-2 in Germany (as of November 20, 00:00). The number of deaths related to the virus rose by 260 to a total of 13,630 by Thursday. The RKI estimates that around 562,700 people have now recovered.

Vaccine approval in Europe later this year

Meanwhile, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has high hopes for the rapid approval of a corona vaccine. Merkel expects a corona vaccine to be approved in Europe as early as December or "very soon after the turn of the year", as she said on Thursday evening after video consultations with EU heads of state and government.

Reproduction value slightly below 1

According to the RKI situation report on Thursday evening, the so-called seven-day R was 0.99 (previous day: 0.95). This means that 100 infected people theoretically infect 99 more people. The value represents the occurrence of the infection 8 to 16 days ago. If it is below 1 for a long time, the infection process subsides.

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