‘COVID-19 Crisis Under Control’, Germany Says Despite Recording Highest Number of Daily Cases
Despite a recent uptick in the number of new cases, Germany has declared that its coronavirus crisis is ‘under control’.
This was stated by Health Minister Jens Spahn. He further said that the lockdown introduced on March 18 ‘was successful’ and that infection numbers have ‘sunk significantly’ since then.
Speaking on Friday shortly after the Robert Koch Institute reported 3,380 new infections, making the total number of cases to be 133,830, he said the outbreak is now controllable in the country.
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The new figure means that the rate of new infections has increased slightly to 2.7 percent, but still below 34.5 percent reported on March 19, the first full day of the lockdown.
The 299 deaths recorded brings the total death toll from 3,569 to 3,868, which is slightly down on the 315 reported Thursday. Although it is still Germany’s second-deadliest day so far.
At a news conference, Spahn said: “The outbreak has – as of today – become controllable and manageable again”. He added that the health care system had ‘at no time been overwhelmed so far’.
On the Robert Koch Institute, he said that Germany’s reproduction rate – the number of new people each person infects, often quoted as ‘R’ – was at 0.7, meaning each person infected with the disease in Germany is infecting less than one other person, on average.
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A reproduction rate of less than 1 means the spread of the disease has slowed to the point where it starts to go into decline. From the way researchers calculated the number, it, however, means that infection data from the last three days – which shows the rate of infections increasing – was excluded.
Due to their uncertainty over the figure, researchers have cautioned that any attempt to ease lockdown measures must be taken slowly.
