Germany's death rate from coronavirus is far lower than that of its hard-hit European neighbours, but scientists are not sure why.
The latest official figures show 22,762 coronavirus cases in Germany and 86 deaths - a death rate of just 0.4 per cent, or one in every 265 patients.
That puts Germany's death rate well below that in Britain (5.3 per cent), Italy (9.0 per cent), France (4.5 per cent), Switzerland (7.4 per cent) or Spain (5.4 per cent), which along with Germany are the six worst-affected countries in Europe.
There is no obvious explanation for this, because Germany has a relatively old population, a comparable health system to other countries, and has only imposed nationwide quarantine measures in the last few days.
One possible factor is that Germany is testing more aggressively than some countries, aiming to 'find every case' - meaning that its death rate could be a truer picture of the crisis.
The known patients in Germany are also younger than those in Italy, possibly lowering the death rate of a virus which is known to be more dangerous to older people.
Germany also has more intensive care beds than Italy, France or Britain, meaning that patients could be recovering more quickly.
The head of Germany's public health institute said today that 'we are seeing signs that the exponential growth curve is flattening off slightly', although the institute's own figures showed a surge in cases in the last 24 hours.
One possibility for the death rate discrepancy is that Germany has been more effective at testing and finding virus cases.
Under that theory, the death rates of other countries are actually far lower because many more people are surviving the virus and never being recorded as patients.
That would reflect the position in South Korea, where the government has carried out mass testing and where the death rate is a comparatively low 1.2 per cent.
German government policy is to 'do everything to find, isolate, test and treat every case' and 'locate every contact person'.
The top German health institute says the country can carry out around 160,000 tests per week, according to German media.
In Britain, by contrast, Boris Johnson has admitted that the UK almost certainly has far more cases than have been officially confirmed.
As of Sunday morning, there had only been 78,430 tests carried out in the UK, of which 5,683 were confirmed positive.
The NHS is not advising everyone with coronavirus symptoms to be tested, saying suspected virus patients should stay at home if they can cope.
The United States has also faced delays in rolling out mass testing, while Italian hospitals and medics have been overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
