Will Hamburg be declared a hotspot again?

It is not yet clear how Hamburg will deal with the planned changes to the Infection Protection Act.

Will Hamburg be declared a hotspot again?

It is not yet clear how Hamburg will deal with the planned changes to the Infection Protection Act. "First of all, this is just a draft for discussion," said the spokesman for the Hamburg health authority, Martin Helfrich, to WELT. "We will now evaluate it." Helfrich did not want to say how Hamburg's responsible department head, Senator Melanie Leonhard (SPD), basically stands on renewed tightening of the containment measures in autumn.

However, it has already been made clear in the past "that we consider it necessary for the federal states to have options for action, so that the federal states can take measures if the infection situation worsens - i.e. there is a legal basis for this". Comparatively strict rules applied in the past, for example during the hotspot period.

Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) and Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) presented their Corona roadmap for the fall on Wednesday. In order to ensure the functionality of the health system, the federal states should again be able to order a mask requirement indoors for everyone who is not fully vaccinated, recovered or tested. Mandatory tests, for example in schools and daycare centers, should also be made possible. The new Infection Protection Act is scheduled to come into force on October 1st.

Meanwhile, the official corona incidence in Hamburg has fallen for the fifth week in a row. The health authority gave the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within a week as 380. In the past week, 7244 new infections were added. Due to different calculation bases, the incidence given by the Hamburg authorities is higher than that of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Experts also assume that there is a high number of unreported infections, since mandatory tests have been omitted and only some of those infected have a PCR test done. In addition, many Hamburg residents are currently on vacation.

According to the authorities, the number of patients infected with the corona virus in hospitals fell from 409 to 372 within a week. Of these, 36 were treated in intensive care units – one more than a week ago. According to the RKI, at least 690,460 corona infections have been detected in Hamburg since the beginning of the pandemic. The number of people who have recovered is now 673,500, 2836 people have died here in connection with Covid-19.