On Tuesday, 5 July, the daily number of COVID19 infections exceeded 1 000 cases for the first time in more than two months. Hospitalisations remain at less than 400. “We are dealing with an increasing number of infections, which is not expected to pose a risk to the capacity of the healthcare system”, announced Health Minister Adam Niedzielski in a post on Twitter.

According to data provided by the Ministry of Health, 1 075 coronavirus infections were recorded on 5 July, including 166 re-infections. A week ago, 696 coronavirus infections were reported, including 71 re-infections.

The Ministry of Health assures that, together with collaborating expert centres, it is following national and international analyses. In this regard, it stresses that it is preparing for various scenarios, while at the moment “no decisions have been made to make regulatory changes”.

The number of new COVID19 infections is increasing worldwide. Omicron subvariants BA.5 and BA.4 are predominant and are more infectious compared to the existing variants.

BA.5 accounts for 54% of new cases in the USA. In South Korea, its share is already 25%. This variant is also prevalent in Italy and Germany.

The Robert Koch Institute reported that there are currently 688 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days in Germany. However, as the German news agency DPA points out, experts estimate that there are twice as many infections because many people no longer take the PCR test and miss the statistics.

Subvariants of omicron BA.4 and BA.5 are even more mutated than the original omicron, which means that our immune system has difficulty recognising these new subvariants, regardless of whether we have previously been vaccinated or infected, wrote on Twitter Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert at New York University.

Adrian Andrzejewski