The proportion of the omicron sub-variant BA.5 in Germany is still low – but it has been growing steadily for weeks. Most recently, BA.5 caused an increasing number of cases, especially in South Africa and Portugal. But regardless of this, the infection pressure in Germany remains high, writes the RKI.
The proportion of the omicron subvariant BA.5 in Germany is growing, but so far at a very low level. It was 1.4 percent according to the latest available data, a sample from the week before last. In the weeks before it was 0.5 and 0.3 percent, as can be seen from the Corona weekly report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
However, the steady growth of the omicron variant BA.2, which has been dominant for some time, seems to have stopped, and the value has fallen slightly to 97.4 percent. “The currently increasing trend in the Omicron lines BA.4 and BA.5, especially in South Africa and recently also in Portugal, is accompanied by an increase in the number of Covid 19 cases and the positive rate,” writes the RKI. In Germany, there has only been a very small increase in BA.4 so far, from 0.1 to 0.3 percent. According to the report, there has not been a strong increase in mixed variants either. However, not all positive samples are examined accordingly.
With regard to the development of the pandemic, the RKI states that the seven-day incidence continued to fall last week: by 13.5 percent. Many indicators of hospital admissions and deaths continue to decline. “The infection pressure remains high with around 400,000 Covid-19 cases reported to the RKI within the last week.” In the omicron wave, over a million infections have been reported weekly in the past few months.
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