Coronavirus infections are increasing in Germany, as stated by the official data, just days after the country decided to ease its lockdown restrictions.
As stated by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the reproduction rate – the approximate number of individuals a confirmed patient infects – is now more than 1.
This means the amount of infections is now rising within the country.
The report came as thousands of people gathered on Saturday demanding a complete end to the lockdown in Germany.
Chancellor Angela Merkel declared a broad relaxation of national restrictions on Wednesday after meeting with the leaders of Germany’s 16 states.
All shops are granted permission to reopen, students will gradually return to their educational institutes and therefore the Bundesliga – Germany’s top football league – will restart as soon as next weekend.
But there have been protests across the country on Saturday, as some entailed measures to be lifted even faster.
Germany has the seventh-highest number of confirmed cases within the world, with latest RKI data on Sunday showing the reported infected tally at 169,218 and a reported toll of almost 7 thousand people.
The reproduction number is a method of rating a disease’s ability to spread. it’s not fixed digit as it changes as our behaviour changes or as immunity develops.
It is one out of three important measurements for monitoring the outbreak, the others being the severity of symptoms and therefore the number of cases.
The report from the public health agency released on Saturday said the reproduction rate was estimated at 1.1, while Sunday’s update put it at 1.13. The amount has been under 1 for most of the last three weeks.
The agency said this estimate involved “a degree of uncertainty”, and the rate would have to be observed closely over the upcoming days.
It was not yet possible to assess “whether the decreasing trend in the number of incident cases observed over the past few weeks will continue or whether case numbers will again increase”, it added.
Germany has won praise for its response to the outbreak. Mass testing and effective lockdown restrictions have helped keep the death toll far less than in other European countries.
But some have condemned Mrs Merkel’s decision to ease those measures after speaking with the heads of the 16 states on Wednesday.
The chancellor imposed an “emergency brake”, requiring local authorities to reimpose restrictions if cases rise above a threshold of fifty per hundred thousands individuals.
Outbreaks at meat processing plants within the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein have already reportedly breached that line, and made district officials to act.
And one district within the state of Thuringia reportedly recorded quite 80 infections per 100,000 people, thought to be because of outbreaks at care facilities.
While some worry that Germany is relaxing its restrictions ahead of time, others in Germany are protesting against the continued lockdown.
Small numbers of individuals have taken to the streets in recent weeks but on Saturday this swelled to thousands of individuals who gathered in cities across the country – including Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart.
Officers in Berlin arrested around 30 people outside the Reichstag on Saturday for not following social distancing measures. Authorities say some demonstrators threw bottles at the police.
Right-wing groups and conspiracy theorists also took part in a number of the protests.
