Laurence Dollimore
GERMANY has seen its COVID-19 numbers soar back up again as thousands from the country prepare to head to Spain for their holidays.
On Sunday, the very same day that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez opened up Spain’s borders to its EU neighbours, Germany reported that its coronavirus reproduction rate had jumped to 2.88.
The so-called ‘R’ rate represents, on average, how many people an infected person goes on to infect.
Leaders in Germany want to keep the R rate below one, a task made difficult due to several localised outbreaks in nursing homes, schools and more alarmingly a meat-processing factory, where more than 1,000 workers tested positive for the virus.
It comes as flights have been arriving from Germany to Spain since yesterday after the latter country’s state of alarm finally came to an end.
Monday will see more than 20 flights arrive from Germany, spread across Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Mallorca.
There are no flights from Germany to Malaga today.
Germany has achieved a remarkably low death count compared to its nearby neighbours.
With 191,272 confirmed cases, the total number of lives lost to the disease there stands at 8,895.
It’s a fraction of the almost 30,000 confirmed dead in the likes of Spain and France or the more than 40,000 in the UK.
Germany’s R rate is calculated every four days and may well lower in the coming days, but it will serve as a warning that a country so praised for its handling of the pandemic can easily experience a resurgence in COVID-19 incidence.
The dramatic rise in new German Corona infections is related to two new hotspots:
1. In the county of Guetersloh (North-Rhine-Westfalia) Germanys largest meat processing factory Toennies report 1,500 new cases (5 of them in ICU) and 7,000 people in quarantine within last five days. All schools in the towns of Rheda Wiedenbrueck, Verl and Guetersloh have been closed. Probably a complete lockdown of the entire county will be ordered soon. Since yesterday German army is helping with testing. Several of the workers of the factory unauthorised probably returned to their home countries Bulgaria and Romania, probably carrying the virus with them.
2. A quarantine of a apartment bloc in the city of Goettingen (Lower Saxony) with 1,300 people, most of them muslims, that didn’t respect distance rules during a fasting brake party after the end of the Ramadan.
Corona reproduction rate has surged to 2.88, mainly due to the two hotspots.
Yesterday night 500 young men of several nationalities (therof 50% Germans) and in the age of 16 to 25 years rioted in the city of Stuttgart, looted and damaged several shops and injured 19 policemen. The reason for the riot is not clear but it is assumed that the Stuttgart party scene, which due to Corona is not allowed to visit bars and discos, is gathering drunken on the main places of the city. The situation escalated when the police tried to catch some young drug traffickers.