Germany Curbing Mortality Rate By Conducting 500,000 COVID-19 Tests Per Week - Virologist

Germany's ability to conduct roughly 500,000 tests for COVID-19 per week explains the comparatively low death rate from the disease in the European country, the head of the Institute of Virology at Berlin's Charite University Hospital, Christian Drosten, said on Thursday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th March, 2020) Germany's ability to conduct roughly 500,000 tests for COVID-19 per week explains the comparatively low death rate from the disease in the European country, the head of the Institute of Virology at Berlin's Charite University Hospital, Christian Drosten, said on Thursday.

"The reason why we, at the moment, have so few deaths in Germany ... compared to the number of patients, is explained by the fact that we are conducting a huge number of laboratory tests in Germany. It is estimated that we are currently conducting more than half a million tests per week," Drosten said during a press conference in the German capital of Berlin.

The country's research minister, Anja Karliczek, who spoke alongside Drosten, announced 150 million Euros ($164 million) in funding for a national patient database that will allow scientists to share material in the hope of accelerating the development of treatments and vaccines against COVID-19.

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, Germany's Robert Koch Institute has registered a total of 36,508 cases of the disease in the country, with 198 deaths a mortality rate of just 0.5 percent.

The mortality rate in Italy and Spain, the two European countries most affected by the disease, currently stands at 10 percent and 7 percent respectively, according to figures published on Tuesday.