Why Germany Has Lower Death Rate than Great Britain?

Germany

Coronavirus (COVID-19) death rate in countries with confirmed deaths and over 1,000 reported cases as of May 25, 2020, by country:

Thus, until May 25, 2020, the Coronavirus death rate in Germany is obviously lower than most countries. The active cooperation from Germany citizens and Germany government’s strategies help them to control the spread of Coronavirus. (Raynor de, 2020)

Reasons: 

1. During Coronavirus pandemic, Germany creates a new method to check patients, local people call it Corona taxis. Corona taxis: “Medics outfitted in protective gear, driving around the empty streets of Heidelberg to check on patients who are at home, five or six days into being sick with the coronavirus. They take a blood test, looking for signs that a patient is about to go into a steep decline. They might suggest hospitalization, even to a patient who has only mild symptoms; the chances of surviving that decline are vastly improved by being in a hospital when it begins.”  Corona taxis shows a high level of engagement and a commitment of public resources in fighting the Coronavirus. (Bennhold, 2020)

2. One of a reason for the low case-death rate in Germany is because Germany has already been testing more people in percentage than most other countries. So, Germany has more confirmed cases for the same number of fatalities. (Rossman,2020)

3. The use of a distributed network of testing through personal hospitals, clinics and laboratories, instead of relying on all tests only from a government resource, helped Germany’s robust and rapid testing project. Countries, like the US and the UK did use only government resources to support whole testing system. The federated German system allows for more regional autonomy. So, it is easier for local healthcare systems to coordinate the work of different laboratories. (Rossman,2020)

Great Britain

Total cases

United Kingdom

The U.K. has more than 200,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it the sixth-worst affected in the world (Template: COVID-19 Pandemic Data). 

Reasons:

1. Early errors: Epidemiologists and former public health officials believe the United Kingdom ‘s plan to counter COVID-19 has become disorganized, leading to delays in buying critical equipment and monitoring, conflicting signals on public safety policies, and a lag behind neighbors in enforcing social distancing and other controls. That probably has allowed the virus to spread quickly and undetected. (Perrigo, 2020)

1. Critical shortages: It wasn’t clear until later when reported cases started to grow exponentially in early March that Britain’s inability to travel rapidly back in February to get test kits would have such a significant impact. Although in the second week of March, Germany was testing about 20,000 people a day, Britain was testing an average of under 2,000. (Perrigo, 2020)

References：

Bennhold, Katrin. “A German Exception? Why the Country’s Coronavirus Death Rate Is Low.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/world/europe/germany-coronavirus-death-rate.html.

Best, Raynor de. “Coronavirus Death Rate by Country.” Statista, 25 May 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-death-rates-worldwide/.

Perrigo, Billy. “How the U.K. Mismanaged Its Coronavirus Response.” Time, Time, 17 Apr. 2020, time.com/5823382/britain-coronavirus-response/.

Rossman, Jeremy. “Coronavirus: Why Is Germany’s Fatality Rate so Low?” The Conversation, 7 May 2020, theconversation.com/coronavirus-why-is-germanys-fatality-rate-so-low-135496.

“Template: COVID-19 Pandemic Data.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data.