Thread by @kakape

To all my international colleagues:
Your German word of the day (and the next weeks) is “Hospitalisierungsinzidenz” or “7-Tage-Hospitalisierungsinzidenz” to be very German…

This is essentially the number of hospitalized #covid19 patients per 100,000 per week
(with patients counted for the week their case was notified not when they were hospitalized)
and it’s now the variable that will be used to decide what level of measures is instituted.

If Hospitalisierungsinzidenz in a state is

3-6: Events will only be open to vaccinated and recovered peope (2G)
6-9: Events will only be open to vaccinated and recovered peope who also have a negative test (2G+)
>9: further measures may be added (if state’s parliament agrees)

Obviously given delays in notification, most recent “Hospitalisierungsinzidenzen” tend to be underestimates.
Which is why you get this shape in the current graph for Germany:

rki.de/DE/Content/Inf…

To be clear: I’m not a fan.

Again and again in this pandemic we have reacted too late. So using a measure that has a built-in delay (the hospitalized patients this week are the infections of previous weeks after all) seems to me exactly the wrong strategy.

Switching from infections to hospitalizations as the key measure, feels a bit like telling your smoke detector not to start beeping when it detects smoke but only when it’s starting to melt from the heat.