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BERLIN (REUTERS) – New coronavirus infections are accelerating again in Germany just days after their leaders loosened social restrictions, raising concerns that the pandemic could spiral out of control again.
The Robert Koch Institute for Disease Control said in a daily bulletin that the number of people each sick person now infects, known as the reproduction rate, or R, had risen to 1.1. When it exceeds 1, it means that the number of infections is growing.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, bowing to pressure from the leaders of Germany’s 16 federal states to restart social life and revive the economy, announced on Wednesday (May 6) measures that included more store openings and a gradual return to the school.
At the same time, it launched an “emergency brake” to allow for the re-imposition of restrictions if infections recover again.
Dr. Karl Lauterbach, a Social Democratic lawmaker and professor of epidemiology, warned that the new coronavirus could begin to spread rapidly after seeing large crowds on Saturday in his hometown of Cologne.
“You have to expect the R rate to exceed 1 and let’s go back to exponential growth,” Dr. Lauterbach said in a tweet. “The relaxation measures were too poorly prepared.”
The Robert Koch Institute said Sunday (May 10) that the confirmed number of new cases of coronavirus had increased by 667 daily to 169,218, while the number of daily deaths had increased by 26 to 7,395.
“It is too early to infer whether the number of new infections will continue to decline as in recent weeks or will increase again,” the institute said in a separate daily bulletin published Saturday night.
He warned that the R figure was subject to statistical uncertainty, adding: “Increasing the R reproduction number requires close monitoring of the situation.”
Germany has the sixth highest number of Covid-19 cases in Europe, but it has managed to contain deaths from highly infectious respiratory disease thanks to widespread and early testing and a well-managed and well-funded health system.
The latest phase of its pandemic management, critics say, has put too much burden on local authorities to detect and respond to new outbreaks. Some epidemiologists also consider that a threshold set at 50 cases per 100,000 people to reimpose distancing measures is too high.
This level has already been activated in two districts in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig Holstein, where Covid-19 has exploded among workers in meat processing plants.
The North Rhine-Westphalia plant closed on Friday after more than 150 of its 1,200 workers tested positive. Many are Eastern European migrants hired by subcontractors and housed in shared rooms that are a potential hotbed of infection.
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