Germany bets on South Korean model in virus fightback

In the race against the coronavirus, Germany is betting on widespread testing and quarantining to break the infection chain, a strategy borrowed from South Korea whose success in slowing the outbreak has become the envy of the world.

Germany is already carrying out more coronavirus tests than any other European country at a rate of 300,000 to 500,000 a week, according to officials.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government aims to ramp that up to at least 200,000 tests a day, according to an interior ministry document seen by several German media outlets.

The goal would be to test all those who suspect they have caught the virus, as well as the entire circle of people who have come into contact with a confirmed case.

Current testing criteria are focussed on those who are sick with Covid-19 symptoms and have had contact with a confirmed case.

The idea, according to the document, is to move from tests ‘that confirm the situation’ to tests that ‘get ahead of it’.

A crucial weapon in the battle would be the use of smartphone location data to trace a patient’s recent movements, to more accurately track down and isolate potentially infected people.

While government officials and epidemiologists have come out in favour of cellphone tracking, it remains a controversial idea in privacyminded Germany, a nation haunted by the surveillance of the Nazi era and the communistera Stasi secret police.

Germany’s proposed plans echo the ‘trace, test and treat’ strategy that appears to have helped South Korea bring its outbreak under control. It has included mass screening for potential cases and heavy use of technology to monitor patients.

Although Germany and South Korea are two very different countries, the Asian nation’s virus strategy ‘can be an example’, the head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for disease control told the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily.

“A key point is tracing cell phone data,” Lothar Wieler said.

With a total of 389 deaths out of more than 52,000 cases, Germany has a mortality rate of just 0.7 per cent – compared with around 10 per cent in hardest-hit Italy and eight per cent in Spain.

But German Health Minister Jens Spahn has warned that the country could face ‘a storm’ of new cases in the weeks ahead.

The RKI’s Wieler warned that the dramatic scenes at Italian hospitals at breaking point could happen in Germany as well.

“We can’t rule out that we will have more patients than ventilators here too,” he said.

With 25,000 intensive care beds equipped with ventilators, Germany is in a better position than many countries to deal with an influx of patients in respiratory distress.

But years of underfunding have left the country’s healthcare system woefully understaffed. —