Statistics
Progression charts
Total confirmed cases, active cases, deaths, and recoveries On 8 April 2020, the Robert Koch Institute began using another method to estimate the numbers of recoveries, now also incorporating cases where the date of the first symptoms is unknown. This caused the singular sharp drop in active cases on that date.
New cases per day
New deaths per day
Reproduction rate The effective reproduction number or reproduction rate, symbolised with Re, is a rate of how many more people are infected from a positive COVID-19 case. In order to suppress an outbreak, the reproduction rate must be constantly below 1, which means each positive case infects less than one person. The Robert Koch Institute measures the reproduction rate as a moving 4-day average of the number of new symptomatic cases using a nowcasting according to the 4-day average number of new cases on a specific day and comparing it with the corresponding mean 4 days before, reflecting the spread of the disease roughly one to two weeks before any specific day. As it is however prone to larger fluctuation, taking into account possible delays in reporting, a 7-day rate is then introduced, which compares the 7-day average of cases at one specific date with 4 days before. Specific values have been published since its daily report on 7 April, while the R-rate has been calculated from 6 March.
Effective reproduction number. Logarithmic scaling highlights the important changes near 1. Above 1, the number of active infections will grow exponentially, but even below 1 the decline will be very slow, if Re is too close to 1.
Number of tests per week Since the beginning of testing in Germany up to and including week 25/2021 (Jun 21–27), 64,551,021 laboratory tests in at least 212 laboratories have been recorded, 4,245,186 of which have been positive. The number of tests is not the same as the number of persons tested, as the data may include multiple tests of patients.
Vaccinations
Vaccination numbers were obtained from the RKI and updated every business day. Starting from April, vaccinations can also be administered at a doctor's office alongside the existing vaccination center and mobile teams.
All-cause deaths Weekly all-cause deaths in Germany based on mortality.org data.
Comparison of 2020 weekly mortality to the average of the 4 preceding years (data at mortality.org is available as of 2016 for Germany).
By age and gender
Data discussion
Testing Until late March, due to the restrictive Robert Koch Institute (RKI) testing criteria, Germans without specific symptoms could not be tested. On 25 March 2020, the RKI announced that people no longer needed to come from risk areas to be tested. In the revised criteria, acute respiratory symptoms were generally maintained, with one additional criterion of the following having to be fulfilled: contact to a confirmed positive case in the last 14 days; work in health care; membership in a risk group; and in case of serious illness, no differential diagnosis. RKI president Wieler said that tests should be conducted in a "targeted and strategically sensible" manner, in order to avoid overstraining testing capacities. Mildly ill patients would not always be able to get tested, in which case they would be asked to remain at home and minimise contact with others. Wieler announced that the taking of representative samples in order to assess the number of infected more reliably would commence soon. Calls for conducting such studies were raised concurrently.
Reporting lag Incubation period, and turn around time of the only diagnostic test (PCR) can lead to a reporting lag of five to ten days. Because of the federal health care system in Germany, states vary in data collection, aggregation and time of release to the public. Local (Landkreise / Kreisfreie Städte) health departments initially reported data to the state health department which transferred data to the nations federal health department, many but not all on the day of receiving them. Reporting switched from manual to electronic. The Robert Koch Institute releases official numbers with an additional delay of several days. Cases reported by state health departments are added earlier to a project by Funke Mediengruppe, to which Berliner Morgenpost belongs. Johns Hopkins University seems to use the numbers of the Funke project for Germany indirectly while the Funke project uses numbers of Johns Hopkins University for other countries. As of 25 March, the number of unknown cases was thought to be up to tenfold higher. Statistician Katharina Schüller advocated for representative sampling to gauge the real number of infected people, an initiative supported by the president of German Medical Association and scientists of Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Number of deaths As of March 2020, the reported death rate calculated as the number of deaths divided by the number of infected in Germany was lower than in some other areas such as Italy, for example. This has led foreign media to applaud or question it, while virologists, among others the leader of the RKI, warned that the country was simply at an earlier stage of the outbreak and fatalities would soon increase. Possible explanations have included:
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