As confirmed cases of coronavirus in Germany soared past 10,000 last week, hundreds of Berliners crowded Volkspark am Friedrichshain to play soccer, basketball, and let their kids loose on the park’s many jungle gyms.
The conditions seemed ideal for the spread of a virus that has killed thousands. Yet Germany’s fatality rate so far — just 0.5% — is the world’s lowest, by a long shot.
«I believe that we are just testing much more than in other countries, and we are detecting our outbreak early,» says Christian Drosten, director of the institute of virology at Berlin’s Charité hospital.
As Europe has become the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, Italy’s fatality rate hovers around 10%. France’s is at around 5%. Yet Germany’s fatality rate from COVID-19 has remained remarkably low since cases started showing up there more than a month ago. As of March 25, there were 175 deaths and 34,055 cases.
Drosten, whose team of researchers developed the first COVID-19 test used in the public domain, says Germany’s low fatality rate is due to his country’s ability to test early and often. He estimates Germany has been testing around 120,000 people a week for COVID-19 during the month-long period from late February to now, when it’s reached epidemic proportions in the country, the most extensive testing regimen in the world.
@TobiasBuckFTWow. Germany is conducting 500,000 Coronavirus tests a week, according to the head of virology at Berlin’s Charite Hospital. Prof Drosten was speaking at a press briefing. Source: @reuters (March 26, 2020)Covid-19 : Comment expliquer le faible taux de mortalité en Allemagne ?
Fin mars 2020, alors que le coronavirus sévit depuis deux mois en Europe, l’Allemagne ne compte que 455 cas mortels pour 57.298 personnes infectées (chiffres du RKI en date du 30 mars). Comment expliquer ce « faible » taux de mortalité ? Retour sur la stratégie décidée par le gouvernement fédéral pour endiguer l’épidémie
Why Germany’s coronavirus death rate is so much lower…
By (March 25, 2020 at 1:53 a.m. GMT+1)
The biggest reason for the difference, infectious disease experts say, is Germany’s work in the early days of its outbreak to track, test and contain infection clusters. That means Germany has a truer picture of the size of its outbreak than places that test only the obviously symptomatic, most seriously ill or highest-risk patients.
Spain’s, the world’s hardest-hit country behind Italy
The rise meant Spain leapfrogged ahead of the official death tally in China, where the global pandemic began but the rate of reported new infections has tapered off. There have been 3,285 deaths in China, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Italy remains the world’s worst-hit country, with more than 6,800 dead.
How did #Spain get its #coronavirus response so wrong? -by @gilestremlett:
Gov late and clumsy reaction, deep faults in the care system after a decade of austerity, sunny Spring, understaffed old people’s homes… theguardian.com/world/2020/mar v @guardian
The New York Times
Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded in th US. Government exercises, including one last year, made clear that the U.S. was not ready for a pandemic like the coronavirus. But little was done. nytimes.com
El experimento sueco
