Journalists from the national Welt am Sonntag newspaper and public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk joined forces to show how German authorities delayed measures to fight the spread of COVID-19 for several weeks, ignoring a blueprint for action. On December 31, ProMED, the international Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, an internet service launched in 1994, sent an email flagging the outbreak of an unknown form of pneumonia in China. The Robert Koch Institute was one of the recipients of that mail. Such information should trigger the implementation of precautionary measures. In 2012 the German government issued a risk analysis report aimed at protecting the population. It was written in response to a SARS outbreak and details specific measures to take to contain a viral outbreak. It suggests closing schools, cancelling mass events. But several weeks passed until any of this happened. On January 23, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on public TV “What we can see here is milder than an influenza outbreak.” At the end of January the southern German state of Bavaria registered the first COVID-19 cases — most of them were mild. In retrospect, doctors and officials say that this was deceptive and allowed them to quickly assume… Read full this story
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