Corona crisis: what is the 7-day incidence? We explain

Continues to keep the pandemic in its grip on global events. One important measure used to assess the situation is the 7-day incidence. Our guide explains what the term means and why it is so important.

One week's worth of numbers: the 7-day incidence is a measure of the new disease rate.

In this post, we recently explained the R-value. Related to this, it is also worth understanding the 7-day incidence.

What the 7-day incidence means

The term incidence is used in medical contexts to refer to the rate of new cases.

• The 7-day incidence indicates how many cases of infection there were in the last seven days per 100.000 inhabitants.
• The value is thus an important measure to assess the situation and its trend.
• Important is the relative nature of the incidence, because only in this way regions of any size can be compared with each other.
• After all, it is a difference whether there are 100 new infections in Berlin or a place in the country. With the 7-day incidence, the statements become comparable.
• The reference to seven days should compensate for the fluctuations of individual days. After all, for example, on weekends there are distorted numbers because of delayed reports. The value thus gains in the multi-day perspective in informative value and reliability.

In Germany, a critical upper limit of 50 applies to the 7-day incidence, in Bavaria even only 35.If this value is exceeded, as was the case at the beginning of October 2020 in many places, stricter measures are considered again.An always up-to-date overview is available on many pages; here, for example, you can see all the important figures from Bavaria.