The death count continues to present a major concern
The virus situation in Germany shows some signs of hitting a plateau in terms of new cases, although the number of deaths is still keeping rather high as medical capacity continues to be stretched thin during the winter.
The number of active cases across the country eases to ~277,700 but the total death count increases to 48,770 as of the latest update today.
A worrying development is that local health officials have found a new virus variant among a group of hospital patients in Bavaria, with the altered mutation found in 35 of 73 of the newly infected people in the hospital in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
It is still not clear about how infectious and how different the latest variant is for now.
In terms of healthcare capacity, there were 4,947 (-56) virus patients requiring intensive care as of yesterday with there being 4,424 (16%) intensive care beds still available.
