The public health department of the city of Bonn will no longer completely record Corona case numbers as of today. The health department will give priority to recording cases from vulnerable groups and during outbreaks, the city of Bonn announced. This primarily affects senior citizen facilities and hospitals. The city's crisis management team passed a resolution to this effect on 30 March. This approach is already the case in other cities.

"In view of the predominantly mild courses of the Omikron variant, a complete recording is no longer in proportion to the personnel requirements that would have to be made for this," it says in justification. In addition, the burden on the health system cannot be read off from the incidences, "but rather from the bed utilisation of the normal and intensive care units of the hospitals". The city also says that the health department must once again take on long-neglected compulsory tasks, such as the school entrance examinations for future first-graders.

There are also changes at the city's Corona hotline: Since the number of calls to the hotline, which is staffed from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, has decreased significantly, the city is gradually reducing staffing. The hotline is to be discontinued on 30 June 2022.

The seven-day incidence in Bonn is still at a high level. The value on Wednesday is 1439.0, as the city announced. Most infections continue to occur in children, adolescents and young adults, it said in a statement. The incidence up to 19 years is 1956.4, in the age group 20 to 39 years 1502.8, 40 to 59 years 1541.7, 60 to 79 years 866.1 and in the age group 80 years and older 687.1.

Currently, 1,220 people have tested positive in schools and day-care centres, including 46 educators, 222 day-care centre children, 47 teachers, 875 pupils and 30 other staff. At least three infections have currently occurred in 41 kindergartens, two evening schools, five vocational colleges, four special schools, four comprehensive schools, 16 primary schools, 18 grammar schools, four secondary schools and five secondary modern schools, the city reports. Outbreaks with at least three related infections have occurred in four senior citizen facilities and two hospitals.

The incidence of Corona in North Rhine-Westphalia has continued to fall slightly. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days was 1358.5 on Wednesday, compared to 1368.3 on Tuesday and 1399.2 on Wednesday last week.

Within one day, the health authorities in the most populous federal state reported 49,969 new infections and 76 deaths related to the coronavirus.

The so-called hospitalisation incidence hardly changed and was 7.26 on Wednesday. The indicator describes the number of Corona-infected persons admitted to hospitals per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days. The proportion of Covid 19 patients in intensive care units was 9.2 percent, according to data from Tuesday (12.15 p.m.).

During the current Corona wave, more people are off work than at any time since the beginning of the pandemic, according to an evaluation by the health insurance company Barmer. From 13 to 19 February, 52,100 employees insured with Barmer were on sick leave due to a Corona infection, as the health insurance company announced on Tuesday. At the peak of the first Corona wave, there were up to 25,100 employees - about half as many. Last year, an average of about 10,430 people insured by Barmer were entitled to sick pay because of an infection with the virus.

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