The corona incidence in Hamburg has fallen for the fourth week in a row. The health authority gave the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within a week on Tuesday as 524.5. Last week the value was 680.0, the week before that it was 751.9. According to the information, 9,989 new infections were added in the past week, compared to 12,951 the week before.
Due to different calculation bases, the incidence given by the Hamburg authorities is higher than that of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The RKI gave the seven-day incidence for the Hanseatic city on Tuesday as 476.9 – after 533.4 in the previous week. Nationwide, the value fell from 744.2 to 678.7 within a week.
However, the numbers do not provide a complete picture of the infection process. Since mandatory tests have been dropped and not all infected people have a PCR test done, a high number of unreported cases can be assumed. The health authority had therefore already stopped publishing the figures daily in May and has only given weekly overviews since then. In addition, it may well be that the picture is distorted by the holiday situation in Hamburg – many residents of the city are simply not there at the moment, and voluntary tests are also canceled at schools.
According to the authorities, the number of people infected with the corona virus in the hospitals in the Hanseatic city rose from 379 to 409 within a week (as of Monday). Of these, 35 were treated in intensive care units, 9 more than a week ago. According to the RKI, the hospitalization incidence, i.e. the number of corona infected people admitted to Hamburg clinics per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days, rose from 2.75 to 4.70 within a week. Nationwide, the value on Tuesday was 7.08.
According to the RKI, at least 683,335 corona infections have been detected in Hamburg since the outbreak of the pandemic in February 2020. The number of people who have recovered is now around 661,400. According to the institute, 2,797 people have died in Hamburg in connection with Covid-19 – that was 31 more than reported last week.
In Hamburg, meanwhile, significantly fewer people were diagnosed with cancer in the first year of the pandemic, 2020, than in previous years. The number of diagnoses was 26 percent below the average cancer incidence for the years 2017 to 2019, the health insurance company Barmer recently announced in a current analysis of Barmer billing data. Fewer cancer diagnoses do not have to mean that there are actually fewer cancer cases, said state managing director Susanne Klein. The decline may have to do with the fact that people have avoided hospitals and doctor’s offices out of fear of contracting the corona virus.
According to Barmer, cancer diagnoses of the skin, breast, prostate and digestive organs were examined. While the number of skin cancer diagnoses decreased by 10 percent, the decreases in the digestive organs were significantly higher at 25 percent and in the breast at 28 percent. The number of prostate cancer diagnoses fell by 57 percent compared to previous years.
Klein advised anyone who has recently postponed their cancer screening to catch up as soon as possible. Under no circumstances should we wait for the end of the pandemic. “In an emergency, valuable time could be lost,” said the state manager.