Wiesbaden (dpa/lhe) - The downward trend in corona infections in Hesse continues. The seven-day incidence - i.e. the number of reported new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days - was 291.0 nationwide on Tuesday according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) (as of 3.07 a.m.). A week earlier, the reading was 444.4.

It should also be noted with the data that the incidence does not provide a complete picture of the infection situation. Experts assume a high number of unrecorded cases - mainly because not all infected people have a PCR test done. Only positive PCR tests count in the statistics. In addition, late registrations or transmission problems can lead to a distortion of individual daily values.

According to the RKI, more than 2.75 million corona infections have been registered in Hesse since the beginning of the pandemic. The number of deaths related to Covid-19 totaled 11,481 on Tuesday, up 75 cases from a week earlier. In which cases Covid-19 was the main cause of death and in which the patients died of other diseases but were also infected with the corona virus is not usually clear from the information provided by the hospitals.

According to the data from the Ministry of Social Affairs in Wiesbaden, there were hardly any changes in the incidence of hospitalization in Hesse. This was 6.12 on Tuesday after 6.8 in the previous week. The hospitalization incidence indicates how many people per 100,000 inhabitants were newly admitted to hospitals with a corona infection within seven days.

According to data from the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi), there were 123 adult patients with Covid-19 in the intensive care units of the Hessian clinics on Tuesday. 44 of them had to be ventilated (as of 2:05 p.m.).