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Reconstruction of the Corona Outbreak: The Lost Weeks

In Germany, the risk of a corona pandemic was clearly underestimated at the beginning. This emerges from confidential documents that BR and “Welt am Sonntag” are available. A reconstruction.

By Arne Meyer-Funfinger and Ann-Kathrin Wetter, BR

The international early warning system ProMED will send an email on December 31st. It’s about an unknown pneumonia in China. The report on the novel corona virus also goes to the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.

From there, a race begins against time and against what will become a pandemic. The Federal Government had a kind of blueprint for such a case – a paper from 2012. Title: “Report on risk analysis in civil protection”. It says what to do in the event of a pandemic: close schools, cancel major events. But it takes weeks for politicians to implement such measures.

Not worse than the flu?

Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn says on January 23 in the daily topics: “The course of the infection here is much milder than we see with the flu.” The first cases occur in Germany at the end of January – most with a mild course of the disease. The treating doctor, Professor Clemens Wendtner from the Munich Clinic Schwabing, says today in the BR-Interview: “If we had had symptomatic patients with great difficulty, the danger would have been classified differently.”

Berlin government officials also come to this conclusion later: The first infections in Germany would have led to a fallacy: see, we can contain it.

Corona virus is at the bottom of the agenda

On January 29, there are already suspected cases worldwide, the Health Committee meets in the German Bundestag. Coronavirus is agenda item 5b – at the end of the session. The head of the Robert Koch Institute, Lothar Wieler, complains about the “poor information policy of China”. It is still not clear how the virus is transmitted.

According to the minutes, there is no mention of the “Risk analysis for civil protection” from 2012 in this meeting. The health scientist Professor Gerd Glaeske from the University of Bremen considers this to be a failure: “In principle, this report was not sufficiently taken note of and did not respond in the end to the fact that arrangements had long been made for the next epidemic or pandemic.”

Spahn in February: “Currently unreal performance”

Less than two weeks later, on February 12, Jens Spahn told the health committee that the danger of a pandemic was “an unreal idea at the moment”.

Achim Kessler, chairman of the left in the health committee, criticizes that there was a phase in which the situation was downplayed. “We were informed that there were pandemic plans for influenza in Germany. And these were now being switched to the corona virus, and that was all completely unproblematic,” he says in BR-Interview.

Talks about export ban for protective equipment

At the end of February it sounds different in internal rounds. Earlier than previously known, the federal government is considering locking down. The question is circulating in the Ministry of the Interior: Are there consequences for internal security? The virus is now spreading in many countries. But Germany celebrates carnival and carnival. Political Ash Wednesday takes place in Passau, with beer and crowds.

Experts meet at the Federal Ministry of the Interior on the same day, February 26th. The minutes of the meeting are classified. It is BR research and “Welt am Sonntag” before. The meeting is about, among other things, that the supply of masks is becoming scarce, and there is also talk of a possible export ban for protective equipment.

78 long days

The Health Committee will meet for a special meeting on March 2nd. There is also discussion about the cancellation of major events. Minister of Health Spahn makes it clear that the local authorities should make a decision – “without coming from Berlin for instruction,” the minutes said. Almost a week passes before the minister’s recommendation to cancel major events.

On March 11, the WHO announced the pandemic case. A week later, on March 18, Chancellor Angela Merkel made a television appeal: “It’s serious. Take it seriously.”

Germany comes through the Corona crisis well in international comparison. But it is also clear: 78 days have passed from the first report in the ProMED early warning system to decisive measures: major events canceled, schools closed, shops closed. As described in the 2012 blueprint.


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