Germany continues to see a steady rise in cases as the economy reopens
The 537 new cases reported in the past day is a bit on the high side for a weekend count (+192 and +214 in the two weeks prior) and that brings the total number of confirmed cases to 190,359 with the number of deaths rising to 8,885 in total.
However, at least recoveries are still picking up with an estimated total of ~175,300 persons reported to have recovered from the infection as of the latest update.
That said, a big issue with the German situation now is that the virus reproduction rate is continuing to tick higher over the past week or so.
RKI estimates that the 4-day moving average of the virus reproduction rate to be at 2.88 as of yesterday with the 7-day average rising to 2.03. As a reminder, Germany is trying to keep the threshold under 1.00 to limit the spread and manage hospitalisations.
But despite the concerning statistic, RKI is brushing that aside for now:
Estimates of the reproduction numbers (R-value and 7-day R-value) were between 2 and 3 during the last few days. This is mainly related to local outbreaks which are described above, the outbreak in North Rhine-Westphalia playing a particularly important role in this context . Since case numbers in Germany are generally low, these local outbreaks have a relatively strong influence on the value of the reproduction number. Further developments need to be monitored closely during the upcoming days, especially in regard to whether case numbers are increasing outside of outbreak contexts.
As I mentioned before, the strategy by governments now is to put out fires when they see one and not to address the virus outbreak as a widespread issue. ICYMI, Germany's finance minister also ruled out another lockdown even if there is a second wave.
