Hope of recovery in Germany

from the NY Times
With Broad, Random Tests for Antibodies, Germany Seeks Path Out of Lockdown

It was the first large Western democracy to contain the spread of the coronavirus and is now the first to methodically go about reopening its economy. Others are watching.

Taking a blood sample as part of random sampling for antibodies to the coronavirus.Credit...

By Katrin Bennhold

BERLIN — Felix Germann was not expecting anyone when his doorbell rang last week. Outside was a doctor who looked like she had just stepped out of an operating theater, green scrubs, face mask and all — and a policeman.

“I didn’t do it!” Mr. Germann said, throwing up his hands, and everybody laughed.

The unusual visitors had come with an unusual proposal: Would he allow them to test his blood for Covid-19 antibodies? Every month? For a year? Starting next week?

He would be helping to further the science that would ultimately allow for a controlled lifting of social and economic restrictions and save lives.

“Of course I said yes,” said Mr. Germann, a 41-year-old project manager at a media company. “I want to help. This is a collective crisis. The government is doing what it can. Everyone needs to do their bit.”
With that, Mr. Germann and his girlfriend joined 3,000 households chosen at random in Munich for an ambitious study whose central aim is to understand how many people — even those with no symptoms — have already had the virus, a key variable to make decisions about public life in a pandemic.

The study is part of an aggressive approach to combat the virus in a comprehensive way that has made Germany a leader among Western nations figuring out how to control the contagion while returning to something resembling normal life.

Other nations, including the United States, are still struggling to test for infections. But Germany is doing that and more. It is aiming to sample the entire population for antibodies in coming months, hoping to gain valuable insight into how deeply the virus has penetrated the society at large, how deadly it really is, and whether immunity might be developing.
The government hopes to use the findings to unravel a riddle that will allow Germany to move securely into the next phase of the pandemic: Which of the far-reaching social and economic restrictions that have slowed the virus are most effective and which can be safely lifted? The same questions are being asked around the world. Other countries like Iceland and South Korea have tested broadly for infections, or combined testing with digital tracking to undercut the spread of the virus.

In hard-hit Italy, antibody tests — and the potential of “immunity licenses” — have lingered over a national debate over how and when to reopen the country. Regional presidents have turned to serological tests as a way to better chart infections but also to get a sense of which workers might have the desired antibodies to possibly provide protection and return to work.

But even the best laid plans can go awry; Singapore attempted to reopen only to have the virus re-emerge.
In the United States, President Trump is in a hurry to restart the economy in an election year, but experts warn that much wider testing is needed to open societies safely.

Both Britain and the United States, where some of the first tests were flawed, virtually forfeited the notion of widespread testing early in their outbreaks and have since had to ration tests in places as they scramble to catch up. In Italy, one of the worst hit countries in the world, the central government and regional leaders sparred over how widely to test.

Germany, which produces most of its own high-quality test kits, is already testing on a greater scale than most — 120,000 a day and growing in a nation of 83 million.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, a trained scientist, said this week that the aim was nothing less than tracing “every infection chain.”

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Comments (2)

Bravo to Merkel. thumbs up
This is the type of leadership sorely needed elsewhere, including here in the USA.
Indeed, especially in the USA. Obviously, we currently have a self-absorbed corrupt conman instead,
the worst president in US history. thumbs down
Very interesting info thumbs up

They can come and take some blood from me if they like.

And I have two sons who live near Munich and are also willing!
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