German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Weak borders. Weak response to coronavirus. Now Germany is the ... [+]
Roughly 48 hours after opting out of enforcing travel restrictions on Italy, the nation with the third highest coronavirus infection rate and third highest death rate, Germany became a top 10 nation with the deadly Covid-19 late Thursday.
Germany now has 48 cases, making it the second most infected European country after Italy.
Italy became the European hub of the new coronavirus, a pathogen that was first discovered in Wuhan, a city of nearly 11 million people in the province of Hubei, China back in December. Northern Italy has a lot of textile business with China, and was late to restrict travel to the mainland. As a result, it now has 644 patients with the disease, up from 453 the day before.
The German government said Wednesday that it saw no need to advise its citizens against travel to Italy, or to restrict Italian air travel into Germany.
“We are far from this scenario,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said during a press briefing in Berlin, as reported by Reuters.
An AlbaStar airlines flight from Milan landed at Munich International Thursday night.
A man in Sao Paulo, Brazil got infected when in northern Italy on business earlier this month and is now the first person with the new coronavirus there.
Germany replaced Thailand as the country with the 9th highest number of Covid-19 patients. No one has died of the disease.
As of Friday morning in Shanghai, there were 83,342 globally confirmed cases of Covid-19. Some 2,858 people have died, making for a global mortality rate of 3.42%.
The iShares MSCI Germany (EWG) was down slightly over 1% in after market hours in New York.
