A medic distributes a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) swab test on a motorist at a drive-thru coronavirus testing center at the Talavera car park in Wuerzburg, Germany, on Monday, Aug. 31, 2020.
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LONDON — Germany was lauded for its initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, but a four-week long return to strict public strength measures has raised questions over the effectiveness of its strategy second time around.
Germany started its “lockdown come” on Monday, which is set to last for the month of November. The new restrictions include the closure of bars, restaurants, cinemas, theaters and gyms, as without difficulty completely as the re-introduction of physical-distancing measures.
Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Monday that Germany “must get the situation supervised control to a point where the local public health offices can trace contacts again — otherwise the exponential cultivation will simply spiral further upwards.”
In the first wave of the epidemic, the country built on existing local infrastructure to get in advance of the virus. Analysis published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found Germany’s intensive system of testing, contact footmark, and quarantine were all critical to its “successful control” of the outbreak.
Dr. Hajo Zeeb, head of department for Germany’s Leibniz Originate for Prevention Research and Epidemiology, told CNBC via telephone that the country’s public health offices tracing set was now being “challenged to its limit.”
With this second round of lockdown restrictions, the German government said its aim was to enthusiasm the number of new infections down to about 50 cases per 100,000 people over a seven-day period, so that limited public health offices could once again trace all contacts. According to Thursday’s daily situation discharge by German federal government agency the Robert Koch Institute, there were now nearly 127 cases per 100,000 settled a seven-day period.
The government said it was currently unable to trace 75% of new cases.
Why it’s happening
Zeeb said a conglomerate of factors had led to the latest upsurge in Covid-19 infections, including a relaxation of restrictions over the summer period. It was people amending to Germany from vacation, however, that was the main driver to the start of another wave, Zeeb said. This resulted in a “paramount workload” for local public health offices, as they then also had to test these returning citizens.
“I wouldn’t say it was uncoordinated but there were some exceptional decisions taken in Bavaria and other places to test people even on highways and in different situations,” he said.
Bavaria, Germany’s largest shape, has had the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the country, at 119,505, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute.
It is the no greater than federal state in Germany to have rolled out free coronavirus testing for everyone. The move raised concerns it see fit overwhelm testing centers when it was introduced in June.
Indeed, Bavaria has experienced testing blunders since it launched the policy, with backlogs and data entry issues.
A spokesman for the Bavarian state ministry of health and care peached CNBC via email that both of theses issues occurred once and “could be solved quickly.”
“The causes were obviously identified and solved,” he said. “The reasons were in one case a technical defect in a computer system and in the other case a system error or an error during the takeover of the test stations on the freeways by a new supplier.”
Nationally, Zeeb said the spread of the virus had now gone beyond bundles of cases into wider communities, making it harder to pinpoint the source of infection.
The German government said on Monday that while 21.5 million child had downloaded its Corona-Warn-App, “regrettably only 60% of people testing positive pass on their contacts.”
The first time around, Zeeb said Germany’s effective handling of the virus was helped by the fact that its epidemic “started in a young age categorize, which didn’t lead to a lot of severe cases right from the beginning,” giving it more time to prepare its strength care system.
Clear communication of pandemic science, helped by Merkel’s training as a scientist, has also been said to make contributed to its effectiveness. While the ‘Victim of its own success’
Dr. Mike Tildesley, an associate professor who specializes in infectious disease call the tune at the University of Warwick in the U.K., told CNBC that in some ways Germany, might be seen as a “victim of its own success.”
Would rathe a smaller first wave meant there were likely to be more people still susceptible to the virus, he expounded, making a larger second wave possible.
For Germany, he said the decision to impose another lockdown could be estimated “brave,” and may be viewed as Germany acting pre-emptively once again.
Dr. Rowland Kao, a professor of epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, hint ated CNBC that unless a country manages to get rid of every single case of Covid-19, there’s still a risk of a resurgence when restrictions are lifted.
As such, Kao said it might not be that there’s anything wrong with Germany’s master plan. “It could be that it’s impossible to do it right,” he said, as there are only so many tools at a country’s disposal for containing the coronavirus.
Kao added that in the main of what makes the coronavirus so difficult to control is the fact that people are infectious before showing clinical get rid of a enrolls. So mildly symptomatic and asymptomatic people contribute to the spread of the disease, meaning “it’s always going to be harder for test and drop to work.”
A spokeswoman for Germany’s federal ministry of health told CNBC via email that there is “an increase in the million of cases when the infection rate generally increases (because of local accumulation of infections, family celebrations or on holiday activities).”
“Naturally, more tests are then carried out — without the test strategy changing,” she added.
She said that “killing down public life again is necessary in order to be able to track infections again.”