As a result, 25,103 positive tests were reported on Friday yesterday. According to the AGES figures, this is the fourth highest value since the pandemic started 23 months ago.
It remained unclear on Saturday how many people had died of or with the corona virus in the past few days. The ministries last gave figures for this on Wednesday, when there were already 13,956 fatalities. AGES stopped three days later with significantly fewer victims – it reported 13,513 deaths on the dashboard.
Different numbers again
The number of hospitalizations is increasing again. But here too, a comparison is not meaningful, since AGES does not publish congruent figures with the crisis management team. According to the agency, there were 1,109 Covid patients in hospitals on Saturday, 193 of them in intensive care units and 916 in normal wards. According to AGES, there were 1,102 patients on Friday. There was also a new record value for active cases. According to AGES, 235,638 people across Austria were confirmed to be actively infected with the corona virus on Saturday. According to AGES, the previous record value was 29,611 new infections on Thursday.
The seven-day incidence also increased further. Across Austria there have already been 1,767 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days (as of Saturday, 2 p.m.). The incidence is highest in Tyrol (2,604), followed by Salzburg (2,558.7) and Vienna (2,305.8), lowest in Burgenland (1,187.1) and Styria (1,157).
These numbers clearly show how the omicron variant of the coronavirus has caused the numbers to skyrocket. Three weeks earlier, when omicron gradually supplanted the delta variant and began to dominate, the seven-day incidence across Austria was 224.3. The seven-day incidence has since increased by 688 percent.
No official figures as of Wednesday
Officially secured data from the ministries was last available on Wednesday – with 27,677 confirmed new infections, the previous record value in the pandemic was reached at that time. It is not the first time that there have been data problems with the number of cases in Austria. But according to the Ministry of Health, the EMS itself is fully functional, all laboratory reports and retrievals can take place without restrictions. The revision is currently not possible smoothly – not least because of the high number of cases – which is why there are more delays or failures in the publication of the adjusted data. A solution and acceleration of the processes are being worked on at full speed, which “will take the next few days”, it said on Friday evening with regard to the data problems.
No booster for vaccination numbers
However, there is no “booster” for vaccination numbers. Although the National Council decided to make vaccination mandatory and this will come into force in just a few weeks, Friday was the weakest vaccination Friday of the year so far. 44,310 people have been immunized against Covid-19, of which 31,620 were third-party bites, according to the Ministry of Health’s vaccination dashboard. The first and second tricks were limited with 5,191 and 7,499 respectively. For comparison: on the two previous Fridays, over 65,000 (January 7) and over 67,000 (January 14) stitches were used to protect against a severe course of the disease in the event of an infection with SARS-CoV-2.
Around 17.32 million vaccinations have been administered since vaccines became available in Austria, of which around 4.24 million were third-party vaccinations. 6,439,678 people currently have an active vaccination certificate, accounting for 72.09 percent of the total population. The vaccination rate is highest in Burgenland (77.7 percent), lowest in Upper Austria (67.7 percent). Lower Austria (73.9 percent), Styria (72.1 percent), Vienna (71.0 percent) and Tyrol (70.8 percent) are now also well over 70 percent.
Source: Nachrichten
