German New Coronavirus Infections Rise Most in Three Days

(Bloomberg) --

The number of new coronavirus infections in Germany rose the most in three days, bringing the total to 107,663 in one of Europe’s worst-hit nations.

More than two weeks after the government ordered citizens to adhere to strict limits on public life, infections increased by 4,288 on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That compared with a gain of 3,252 a day earlier. Germany registered 206 new deaths from the virus, compared with 226 the day before, with the total number of fatalities climbing to 2,016.

The outbreak is growing rapidly in the U.S., Japan, Germany, France and the U.K., according to a weekly forecast by Imperial College London’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis. Germany has the fourth-highest number of infections in Europe, behind Spain, Italy and France, and the fifth-highest in the world, where the U.S. tops the number of confirmed cases.

The head of Germany’s public health institute said Wednesday that the general trend in confirmed cases is “positive” but cautioned that the nation is still only at the beginning of the pandemic.

“We are seeing that we can dampen the growth of the illness but it’s really only a snapshot,” Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, said on DLF radio. “We must not forget that we are seeing more and more outbreaks in hospitals, retirement homes and care homes and these are outbreaks that will quickly push the numbers up.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.