The number of new Corona infections has risen again in North Rhine-Westphalia. As the Robert Koch Institute reported on Monday, the authorities became aware of 111.2 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days. The previous day, the so-called weekly incidence was 109.0, a week ago it was 70.6. The NRW figure was thus below the national average of 154.8.

The most affected age groups were 10 to 14-year-olds with an incidence of 269.8 and 5 to 9-year-olds with a weekly value of 266.3. Among 15 to 19-year-olds, the value was 150.4.

The NRW authorities reported four further deaths to the RKI in connection with Covid disease.

The vaccines against the Corona virus should be delivered more flexibly to doctors' practices, according to the Lower Saxony GP association. "The delivery of the Corona vaccines should not take place in a rigid corridor, but it must be possible on the following day if necessary," Matthias Berndt, chairman of the association, said in a statement distributed on Monday. A family doctor's practice would have to plan all Corona vaccinations well in advance, as there would be at least two weeks between ordering and delivery. This was stipulated by the federal government, said a spokesperson when asked. Berndt emphasised that the demand in the practices could, however, increase by leaps and bounds, for example because of the booster vaccinations. With the current deadline, this sometimes leads to a very high demand for advice from the practice teams. In general, there are enough vaccine doses in the stores - therefore this deadline is not realistic.

Hospitals in Germany are again helping to treat seriously ill Corona patients from abroad. As reported by the North Rhine-Westphalian state chancellery, six Covid patients from Romania were to be brought to Cologne/Bonn airport by the air force on Monday. Four would be treated in intensive care units in Bochum, Krefeld and Bergisch Gladbach, the other two in the Bundeswehr hospital in Koblenz (Rhineland-Palatinate). 

 The patients were to be transported on an Airbus A310, the Bundeswehr medical service wrote on Twitter. The plane landed in Bucharest at noon.

Only just under a third of Romanians are fully vaccinated, according to the EU health authority (ECDC). The 14-day incidence of new infections recently rose above 1,000 per 100,000 inhabitants and remained one of the highest in the EU. In view of the worsening Corona emergency, the EU Commission had already sent additional doctors and medical equipment to the south-eastern European country.

Since the beginning of the Corona pandemic, more than five million people worldwide have died after being infected with the virus. This is according to data from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, which the university published on Monday. The threshold of four million Corona deaths worldwide had been exceeded at the beginning of July.

According to the data from the US researchers, the number of confirmed infections is now more than 246 million cases. At the same time, experts assume that there is a high number of unreported cases of infections and deaths around the globe. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the five million mark a "painful new threshold". "It would be a mistake to think that the pandemic is over." In Africa, he said, only five per cent of the population is fully vaccinated.

The university's website is regularly updated with incoming data and shows a slightly higher level than the official World Health Organisation (WHO) figures. In some cases, the figures have also been temporarily revised downwards again. According to the WHO on Friday, there have been 4.98 million confirmed deaths and around 245 million known infections so far.

(Original text: ga/dpa; Translation: Mareike Graepel)