While Italy has received much of the attention due to the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in the country, there’s another European nation that deserves a closer look: Germany.
Germany has the fifth-most coronavirus cases in the world, but only a fraction of the death toll that has been seen in other countries. And the reason remains a mystery. “We don’t know the reason for the lower death rate,” Marieke Degen, deputy spokeswoman of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI), told me.
The Robert Koch Institute, part of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health, is at the forefront of the country’s coronavirus response. According to RKI’s most recent figures, there are more than 31,500 confirmed Covid-19 cases in Germany. But with 149 deaths as of March 25, the country’s fatality rate was a low 0.5 percent.
In comparison, Italy has more 74,300 confirmed cases and over 7,500 deaths, which puts its fatality rate at 10 percent. In the United States, the fatality rate is currently at about 1.4 percent according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The huge discrepancy in fatality rates between Germany and Italy is also startling because both countries have some of the oldest populations in the world, according to the Washington, DC-based Population Reference Bureau. The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified people over the age of 60 and people with preexisting medical conditions as being at higher risk of experiencing more severe symptoms from Covid-19.
“We need to work together to protect older people from the virus,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday. “Older people carry the collective wisdom of our societies.”
“We don’t do anything special compared to other countries”
