Thread by @bopanc

#Germany success in battling the #coronavirus pandemic has drawn international attention. It has little to do with Angela #Merkel and everything to do with local alliances between authorities, businesses and communities. Our report with ⁦@BBWSJ⁩ ⁦ wsj.com/articles/local…

#Germany in the #coronavirus crisis is like a card player who was dealt a lucky hand but also played it well. The first patients were young people who infected themselves on skiing holidays. The median age of German #COVID19 patients is now 50 (up from 40) wsj.com/articles/local…

The state of Baden-Württemberg, in southern Germany’s industrial heartland, is a good example of how Germany’s states, whose prerogatives include both health care and the rules governing business activities, have tackled the #coronavirus challenge. wsj.com/articles/local…

“We had an early and consistent containment strategy,” said @mannelucha, the state health minister. “We saw the tsunami rolling toward us, and we built up our hospital, care and diagnostic capacities even before it hit us.”
wsj.com/articles/local…

Mr. Lucha’s government quickly set up 160 special clinics for Covid-19 patients to dispense immediate and tailored care without allowing the virus to enter the hospital system, all the while gathering valuable data about the spread of the epidemic @WSJ wsj.com/articles/local…

The state had only 560 officials tasked with tracing the contacts of each infected person but quickly boosted that to over 3,000. @Porsche used its China contacts to help the government get a procurement deal with mask & protective equipment manufacturers wsj.com/articles/local…

#Germany entered the crisis with a dense net of hospitals and diagnostic labs. Today, it has around 34 intensive-care unit beds per 100,000 inhabitants, more than twice as many as France and three times the British and Italian levels. wsj.com/articles/local…

Today, #Germany has a capacity to do nearly 900k tests a week - because the government enabled free market forces from the onset, committing to financially support testing done by private labs who then shifted their operations to #coronavirus probes wsj.com/articles/local…

In the early days of the #coronavirus pandemic, when countries such as Britain struggled to even procure testing kits, Tübingen mayor @ob_palmer organized mobile testing by medical vans that provided walk-in swabbing in his city’s squares wsj.com/articles/local…