Germany to apply 'emergency brake' if virus rebounds

Germany's public health agency has cautiously welcomed the 'emergency brake' agreed to by federal and state authorities should coronavirus cases rebound, but warned that the pandemic is far from over.

Lars Schaade, deputy head of the Robert Koch Institute, said Thursday that setting a level of 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants for reimposing lockdown measures was a pragmatic threshold that I believe in principle is sensible.

But he noted that Germany remains at the start of the pandemic, adding that it can last many months and it will probably continue into the next year. Germany has managed to sharply reduce the rate of new infections to about 1,000 nationwide per day, prompting calls for restrictions to be eased.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel and governors of the 16 states agreed to further loosen the rules, albeit with a fallback clause.

The Robert Koch Institute reported more than 166,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 by Thursday - about 26,000 of them still active - and more than 7,000 deaths. Germany has a population of about 83 million.

Schaade said that only about a third of Germany's massive test capacity of almost 1 million a week is now being used, and only about 3.8% of the roughly 318,000 tests conducted last week was positive.