Daily number of patients who recovered in Germany higher than new reported infections
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The coronavirus outbreak in Germany has become manageable again as the number of patients who have recovered has been higher than the number of new infections every day this week, the health minister said on Friday.
Germany has the fifth highest COVID-19 caseload behind the United States, Spain, Italy and France at nearly 134,000 but has kept fatalities down to a relatively low 3,868 thanks to early and extensive testing.
“The outbreak has — as of today — become controllable and manageable again,” Health Minister Jens Spahn told a news conference, adding that the health care system had “at no time been overwhelmed so far”.
Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, the federal agency responsible for disease control, said the virus reproduction or transmission rate in Germany had dropped below 1 — meaning one person with the virus infects fewer than one other on average. “We see now that for the first time we are below 1. We will see whether that remains stable … There can be new infections any time,” Wieler said, stressing that too much emphasis should not be put on the transmission rate numbers. “We have withstood a first wave very well, achieved through a joint effort by society, but that can change any time,” he told the news conference.
Underlining the authorities’ caution about the virus outbreak, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said: “We must develop a new normality that will accompany us for many months, and probably into next year.”
