Berlin
Germany has reported its highest one-day total of new coronavirus cases, while the number of deaths linked to Covid-19 has climbed above 20,000, AP reports.
The national disease control centre, the Robert Koch Institute, said Thursday that 23,679 new cases were confirmed over the last 24 hours. That’s just above the previous record of 23,648 from Nov 20.
Deaths, which have been relatively low in Germany compared with several other European countries, have increased markedly. Another 440 deaths were reported on Thursday, following a single-day record of 590 on Wednesday. This brings the death toll so far to 20,372. Germany has reported some 1.24 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.
The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units has doubled over the past two weeks, reaching 1,569 on Wednesday. Nearly half of them were on ventilators.
Despite the worrying trend of increased hospitalizations and intensive care unit rates, nearly 7,500 intensive care beds remained free as of Wednesday, according to the RKI.
With total cases of nearly 480,000, Germany has the fifth-highest tally of reported COVID-19 infections in Europe, ranking behind France, Spain, the UK and Italy. But its death toll remains far lower than other hard-hit countries.
While most of Switzerland is preparing for tighter lockdown restrictions because of Covid-19, the country’s French-speaking regions are going in the other direction allowing restaurants to reopen after a drop in cases from one of the worlds highest rates of infection roughly a month ago.—AP
