Some interesting stuff from the Robert Koch institute this morning:
1) In its first coronavirus briefing this week, Germany’s leading public health body, the Robert Koch Institute said that there was evidence that Covid-19 could damage the heart, kidneys and cause blood clotting. Prof Lars Schaade, the RKI’s vice president, said: “We must systematically examine all the evidence, including through autopsies.”
2) The main aim remained ensuring that the number of cases remained in a “safe zone”, he said. Germany’s reproduction rate is currently 0.9 - up on Friday when it was 0.7 - which means every person contracting the illness is infecting a further person. The number of new cases are currently doubling every 20 days, the number of deaths every 12 days.
3) He said test capacity was currently at 730,000 a week in Germany, but should ideally be around one million, with everyone who has a respiratory illness or infection of the airway getting tested. However, he pointed to practical problems with upscaling testing due to a global lack of reagents.
4) Despite reports this morning that children are not actually spreading the disease as much as had been thought, Schaade said that intensive tracking showed that children who had contracted the disease in Germany were found to have as much of the virus in their throats as adults, even if they often show no symptoms. He said the RKI believed children played a not-insignificant role in spreading the disease.
Originally Posted by: Brian Gaze