Coronavirus in Germany: The Wasted Weeks

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 that this disease could easily be handled.

"If things had started with serious cases, the danger may well have been assessed differently," says Professor Clemens Wendtner, from the hospital in Munich Schwabing where the first patients were treated.

On January 29 the Bundestag parliamentary health committee discussed the coronavirus for the first time. It was the last point on their agenda for the day.  At that time RKI boss Lothar Wieler took the opportunity to call out China's information policy and pointed out it was still not clear how the virus could be transmitted. A transcript of the meeting shows that the risk analysis report was not even mentioned in the discussions.

Two weeks later, on February 12 Health Minister Spahn told parliament that there was no real danger of a pandemic. Spahn said the coronavirus situation in Germany was "under control," which showed that "we have prepared ourselves well and are taking great precautions."

Read more: Opinion — COVID-19 pandemic is the defining health crisis of our time

Left Party MP Achim Kessler complained that until then the threat was played down. "We were told that Germany had containment plans for an influenza pandemic and that those were being adapted to the current virus and that all that was completely unproblematic," he said.

The latest research reveals that the government in Berlin first mulled a complete lockdown at the end of February. Interior Ministry officials discussed whether a lockdown might pose a domestic security problem. No action was taken and Germany went on to celebrate Carnival.

The official risk assessment for Germany remained "low," according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). "Coronavirus will come to Germany," RKI President Lothar Wieler said on February 24. "But it won't explode. Rather it will be slow and affect certain regions."

On February 26 experts from the Interior Ministry gathered — the minutes of their meeting were classified as confidential, but the team of journalists has now obtained them. At this meeting the severe shortage of face masks was mentioned, participants also discussed imposing a ban on the export of protective equipment.

On March 2, the parliamentary health committee met again. Members discussed cancelling major public events. But Health Minister Spahn pointed out that this would be up to the individual federal states to decide and that the government in Berlin should not seem to be telling them how to do their job.

It took another week for the first events to be cancelled.

On March 11 the WHO declared a worldwide pandemic.

One week later, on March 18, Chancellor Angela Merkel made a rare televised address telling the German people to take the threat seriously. She called the pandemic German society's "greatest challenge since World War Two."

The media research team summarizes: 78 days went by before Germany took action.

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