Germany is once more in the grip of the coronavirus. Angela Merkel warned a few days ago that the country, which appeared to have escaped the second wave, could be heading for “disaster” unless drastic action is taken. In the past week alone, the headlines have included children being told to bring blankets to school because the windows have to be opened every twenty minutes to ward off the virus, and the news that the entire leadership of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is self-isolating after testing positive. Every day, the record for new infections is broken. There were 7,334 on Friday, up from 6,638 the day before. It’s still nowhere near the sort of numbers seen in the UK or France, but the rate is going up fast. “We don’t expect the numbers to fall tomorrow. They will continue to rise,” Helge Braun, Mrs Merkel’s chief of staff, said on Friday. “We are at the beginning of a really big second wave. Things are significantly more serious than they were in the spring.” It is a stark assessment for a country that, until now, appears to have weathered the pandemic better than almost anywhere else in Europe. “A German exception?” was the headline in the New York Times earlier this year, when Germany made it through the first wave with a significantly lower infection and death rates than its European neighbours.
Germany is once more in the grip of the coronavirus. Angela Merkel warned a few days ago that the country, which appeared to have escaped the second wave, could be heading for “disaster” unless drastic action is taken. In the past week alone, the headlines have included children being told to bring blankets to school because the windows have to be opened every twenty minutes to ward off the virus, and the news that the entire leadership of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is self-isolating after testing positive. Every day, the record for new infections is broken. There were 7,334 on Friday, up from 6,638 the day before. It’s still nowhere near the sort of numbers seen in the UK or France, but the rate is going up fast. “We don’t expect the numbers to fall tomorrow. They will continue to rise,” Helge Braun, Mrs Merkel’s chief of staff, said on Friday. “We are at the beginning of a really big second wave. Things are significantly more serious than they were in the spring.” It is a stark assessment for a country that, until now, appears to have weathered the pandemic better than almost anywhere else in Europe. “A German exception?” was the headline in the New York Times earlier this year, when Germany made it through the first wave with a significantly lower infection and death rates than its European neighbours.