1/ Glad to be in #Germany 🇩🇪 during #COVID19. Stay safe everybody! 😷
telegraph.co.uk/news/0/why-doe…
Paywall, so read in thread below! 👇🏻🧵
telegraph.co.uk/news/0/why-doe…
Paywall, so read in thread below! 👇🏻🧵
2/ Scientists are struggling to understand why the death rate from the coronavirus is so much lower in Germany than other countries. Germany has seen just 52 deaths from the virus so far despite recording 18,361 infections — more than anywhere except China, Italy, Iran and Spain.
3/ That represents a fatality rate of just 0.3 per cent, compared to 7.9 per cent in Italy — raising hopes Germany might be doing something right that other countries can follow.
4/ The disparity has even led to allegations of a German cover-up by the Italian far-Right. But experts have cautioned that Germany may simply be at an earlier stage of the pandemic, and that death rates here may soon catch up.
5/ But they also point to other factors that may be helping keep the German death rate down.
6/ “Germany has had a very aggressive testing process,” Dr Mike Ryan, health emergencies director at the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. “So the number of tests maybe detecting more mild cases.
7/ “From the beginning, we have very systematically called upon our doctors to test people,” Prof Lothar Wieler of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute said.
8/ “We can provide testing to a high degree so that we can easily look into the beginnings of the epidemic."
9/ “Test, test, test” has become the WHO’s mantra in fighting the coronavirus, and experts say Germany’s vigorous testing programme may be doing more than just keeping the death rate down by documenting more cases.
10/ “Italy has a much older population. And in many ways Italy is the poster child for living longer lives, but unfortunately in this case having an older population means the fatality rate may appear higher,” Dr Ryan said.
11/ Official figures show that rates of infection among the most vulnerable age group, those aged 60 and above, are much lower in Germany than elsewhere.
12/ That may just be a case of luck, but it may be that by identifying cases early, Germany has been able to track chains of infection and prevent the virus reaching the most vulnerable.
13/ “There is a very big systemic difference between Germany and other countries,” Christian Drosten, the leading virologist at Berlin’s Charite teaching hospital, told Watson magazine.
14/ “Our regulations for the introduction of new test procedures are very liberal. In other countries, there is a central authority that does all the testing for new diseases.”
15/ By contrast, in Germany any doctor can perform a coronavirus test and public health insurance will pay. Germany is not the only country to record a lower death rate. In South Korea fatalities have also been much lower than the general trend.
16/ “In South Korea it appears it was probably a combination of factors, rather than just one,” says Suerie Moon of the Graduate Institute in Geneva. “Initial cases were among the young, and focused around one church which made it easier for the authorities to contain.
17/ But it appears testing also played a crucial role.”
18/ Other differences in the German health system may also be significant. The country has far more intensive care (ICU) beds than anywhere else in Europe.
19/ Intensive care beds can mean the difference between life and death for those who become seriously ill with the virus, and dire reports from northern Italy have told of doctors being forced to choose which patients get them.
20/ Germany has 28,000 ICU beds. By contrast, the UK has just 4,000. And 25,000 of Germany’s already have the ventilators seriously ill patients need.
21/ At the outbreak of the crisis, Germany had 29.2 intensive care beds per 100,000 people. Italy had 12.5. The UK had just 6.6.
22/ In part, that is because of the different way healthcare is funded in Germany. Public health insurance is compulsory and collected at source alongside income tax
23/ — but it is passed directly to insurance funds and never enters government coffers, effectively firewalling health funding.
24/ Germany may be better prepared for the virus than most of its neighbours, but it may yet need all the beds it has. Authorities here have warned people not to be complacent about the death rate.
25/25 “This is just the beginning for Germany,” said Prof Wieler of the Robert Koch Institute. “If you imagine an epidemic like a curve, then there are countries that are simply further along it.”
