Overall Analysis of COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany
Journal Title: Journal of Regenerative Biology and Medicine - Year 2020, Vol 2, Issue 4
Abstract
What The COVID-19 pandemic has been present in Germany since 27 January 2020, it is the spread of the respiratory disease COVID-19, which first appeared at the end of 2019 and broke out worldwide at the beginning of 2020, triggered by infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 [1,2,4,8,11]. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) initially assessed the risk of the COVID-19 pandemic for the population in Germany on 28 February 2020 as "low to moderate", since 17 March as "high" and for risk groups since 26 March as "very high". With the Act for the Protection of the Population in the Event of an Epidemic Situation of National Significance, which came into force on 27 March 2020, the Federal Ministry of Health was authorised to issue orders in the (normally federal) health care system nationwide and without the consent of the Bundesrat, as long as the Bundestag determines an "epidemic situation of national significance".This determination had already been made on 25 March. For corresponding determinations at the state level, see the list of German laws and ordinances issued as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic.As of June 11, 2020, at 0:00 a.m., the RKI reports 185,416 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection, including 8,755 deaths, and estimates the number of convalescents to be about 171,200.The Robert Koch Institute provides online daily updated case numbers for Germany, broken down by individual countries and administrative districts. These are based on data from the health authorities, which are transmitted electronically to the RKI via the Länder. Initially, the cases that had been laboratory-confirmed in advance were also announced, but according to the RKI, as the number of cases grew, "it was no longer possible to update them manually and report them in a quality-assured manner". From 17 March 2020 onwards, therefore, only the electronically transmitted cases were published. The reporting delay between notification and transmission could lead to deviations from the figures from other sources. The newly reported cases of each day are redistributed in the diagrams back to past days based on the date of illness or, if this is not known, based on the date of recording by the health authority. The values, therefore, change retrospectively, and especially the most recent days are therefore always incomplete. Since not all health authorities transmit data to the RKI at the weekend, there are weekday-dependent fluctuations and, especially in the case of the registration data without a known date of illness, there is an accumulation in the middle of the week. Delayed late notifications and changes in test conditions cause further random errors and jump in the reported figures, which is why no trend reversals can be detected in individual daily changes. This can only happen over several weeks. An evaluation of the data and interpretation of the course of the infection as well as an estimation of the current situation is carried out in the form of so-called nowcasting in the respective current report of the RKI. At the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic in Germany, the Robert Koch Institute estimated the number of undetected and reported infections to be “not very high”. The president of the Robert Koch Institute, Lothar H. Wieler cited as indications the comparatively high-test coverage, the low case mortality, and the discovery of many mild cases in Germany. In contrast, Alexander S. Kekulé, for example, estimated on March 17th that at least four times as many people were infected as the reports reflected, and among other things, because about 10 days can pass between infection and detection. In March, several international scientific studies indicated that about half or more of the infections proceeded without symptoms, which supported assumptions about a high number of unreported cases. At the end of March and the beginning of April, several studies also began in Germany, which is intended to clarify the percentage of infected persons in the total population and thus also the number of unreported cases through random sampling. As for other countries, experts also expect a high number of unreported cases for Germany. However, the exact amount is controversial. Estimates assume that the number of unreported cases is between three and eleven times as high as the number of recorded cases. According to calculations by two scientists from the University of Gottingen on April 2, based on mortality and data from the Johns Hopkins University, only 16 percent of infections had been detected in Germany by the end of March, so the estimated number of unreported cases would have been six times as high as the bright field. The authors of the COVID-19 Case Cluster Study estimate in a pre-publication that in Germany there are 10 undetected cases for every detected case. Other scientists and various media expressed doubts about the reliability of this estimate. The testing capacities in German laboratories amounted to about 84,000 tests per week at the beginning of March and about 160,000 tests per week in the middle of the same month. According to one laboratory, at this time further expansion of the testing capacities was opposed by delivery difficulties and material bottlenecks. A survey by the Association of Accredited Medical Laboratories in Germany (ALM e. V.) put the capacities of medical laboratories in calendar week 12 (16 to 22 March) at 406,000 per week. By 26 March, the number had increased to 250,000 tests per week in the SHI-accredited medical sector alone. According to the RKI, there was a test capacity of 123,304 per day in calendar week 15 (6 to 12 April); according to the laboratories' data on their working days per week, which range between 5 and 7 working days, this corresponds to weekly test capacity of 730,156 tests. A further increase to 1,400,000 tests per week was planned by the end of April. To achieve this goal, it was proposed to mix several samples before testing: in this way, in the event of a negative result, a single test should produce several negative results simultaneously. As of 24 March 2020, only people who show respiratory symptoms should be tested and
Authors and Affiliations
Bittmann S*, Luchter E, Bittmann L and Moschuring-Alieva E
Keywords
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- DOI https://doi.org/10.37191/Mapsci-2582-385X-2(4)-0039
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