Why Germany’s coronavirus death rate is remarkably low
Germany is one of the countries most affected by the new coronavirus pandemic. As of March 31, it had the fifth-highest number of reported cases in the world, with more than 66,800 people being infected.
However, only 645 people have died from the virus, giving a death rate of just under 1 per cent. It gives Germany one of the lowest rates in the world, faring better than other European countries such as Italy – where 11 per cent of infected people have died from COVID-19 – and France, which has a rate of 6.7 per cent.
Experts said the most important factor contributing to Germany’s low death rate is the widespread testing across the country.
While other countries only test very symptomatic cases, Germany “very rapidly rolled out testing to a very large number of people relative to the population”, said Dr Liam Smeeth, clinical epidemiology professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
According to Our World in Data, Germany conducted 167,000 tests as of mid-March while France and Spain carried out 36,747 and 30,000 respectively.
The testing helps detect milder coronavirus cases, bringing the total number up.
“I believe that we are just testing much more than in other countries, and we are detecting our outbreak early,” Christian Drosten, director of the institute of virology at Berlin’s Charité hospital told NPR.
“We have a culture here in Germany that is actually not supporting a centralised diagnostic system, so Germany does not have a public health laboratory that would restrict other labs from doing the tests. So we had an open market from the beginning.”
Germany also has the second-highest number of intensive care beds per capita in Europe and 13.2 nurses per 1,000 people in the general population, higher than other heavily affected countries such as France with 9.7 and Italy with 5.9.
“In general, we have a rather good intensive care situation in Germany,” German virologist Martin Stürmer told Vox. “We have highly specialized doctors and facilities, and maybe that’s part of the reason why our severely ill patients survive compared to those in other countries.”