Emerging COVID-19 success story: Germany’s push to maintain progress

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany has demonstrated elements of success across the four phases of our preparedness and response framework: prevent, detect, contain, and treat. However, starting in October 2020, the country experienced a major surge in cases and deaths that has yet to be brought under control as of January 2021.

The country’s strong enabling environment, including a good public health care system and expert scientific institutions, contributed to the early success. Germany’s prevention protocols facilitated the country’s rapid response to the outbreak, with the early development of testing capacity and high levels of testing, an effective containment strategy among older people, and efficient use of ample hospital capacity. With the surge, however, the disease began to spread among older people, and hospital capacity has been stretched.