One of the peculiarities of the Covid-19 outbreak is the recorded fatality rate. The proportion of those infected who die seems to vary greatly between countries. It is highest in Italy, at around 10%, and around 7% in Spain and Iran. In the UK, France and the Netherlands it is around 5%, and in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea and the US between about 1.5% and 3%. But it is lowest of all in Germany and Austria, at around 0.7% in both countries. According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre, of 53,340 Germans infected only 395 have died; of 7,712 infected Austrians only 58 have succumbed to the virus.
What could explain this? Germans and Austrians are not unusually healthy by western European standards. They take places 26 and 27 (just behind Belgium and just ahead of Britain) in the UN’s ranking of life expectancies; cigarette consumption in both is higher than in Italy. Nor have they contained the outbreak much more than others. Germany has more infected people than anywhere apart from America, Italy, China and Spain. Austria has about as many cases as more-populous Turkey, Canada and the Netherlands. Indeed an Austrian ski-resort, Ischgl in the Tirol, was one of the hotspots from which coronavirus spread to other parts of Europe. And nor can the explanation be that Germany and Austria have imposed unusually tough lockdowns: Austria moved fast to stop public gatherings, but Germany did so more slowly and current social-distancing measures in both countries are milder than in France, Spain or Italy.
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