Why is Germany's COVID-1 death rate so much lower than other countries?

A man walks at the Marienplatz square in Munich, Germany, normally a magnet for tourists, on March 21, 2020, the first day of a dawn-to-dusk curfew in Bavaria during the coronavirus pandemic.

(Image credit: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)

Germany has confirmed nearly 34,000 cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday morning (March 25), but just 171 deaths total. That number — about a 0.5% death rate — suggests the death rate of the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 is way, way lower in Germany than it is in other countries, such as France, where about 4.3% of cases have ended in death or the United States with a 1.3% mortality rate from the coronavirus.

Why does Germany seem to be spared lethal cases of the new coronavirus? Early in the infection spread, Germany began to try to test and quarantine all of those who tested positive, at a time when numbers weren't overwhelming, The Washington Post reported.

Some epidemiologists told the Journal that high testing rates in Germany might partly explain the lower death rate, as more testing would catch even the mildest cases. However, Germany didn't do mass testing at the highest rates — as was seen in South Korea where 10,000 tests were run a day — but Germany was meticulous about the process, the Post reported. Once an individual tested positive, officials then tracked every one of their contacts and proceeded to test and quarantine those individuals, essentially breaking "infection chains," the Post reported.

In addition, the virus is known to have more severe impacts on the elderly, and to date, most of the diagnosed cases in Germany are in younger individuals: The median age for confirmed cases of COVID-19 is 47 in Germany, compared with 63 years old in Italy (where the death rate from the coronavirus is the highest globally, at 9.5%), according to the Robert Koch Institute, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. (The median means half of the individuals are above and half are below that number.)

Jeanna Bryner is managing editor of Scientific American. Previously she was editor in chief of Live Science and, prior to that, an editor at Scholastic's Science World magazine. Bryner has an English degree from Salisbury University, a master's degree in biogeochemistry and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland and a graduate science journalism degree from New York University. She has worked as a biologist in Florida, where she monitored wetlands and did field surveys for endangered species, including the gorgeous Florida Scrub Jay. She also received an ocean sciences journalism fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is a firm believer that science is for everyone and that just about everything can be viewed through the lens of science.

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