Coronavirus: German R-Rate spikes to 60% in a day

The rate at which the virus spreads from an infected person to others has risen significantly above a critical level for keeping the pandemic in check. Germany’s R-rate now stands at 2.88. 

Germany’s coronavirus reproduction rate has jumped to 2.88 — almost three times what it needs to be to contain the outbreak. The reproduction rate, or ‘R’ value, estimates how many people an infected person passes the virus to. Experts say a rate of less than one is needed to eliminate the disease.

Figures released by the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases on Sunday said the average four-day reproduction rate jumped from 1.79 on Saturday, to 2.88. The 7-day ‘r’ value, which tends to fluctuate less dramatically, increased from 1.55 on Saturday to 2.03 on Sunday.

The institute stressed that the increases were mainly due to local outbreaks in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where more than 1,300 workers at a meat-processing plant were recently found to have been infected.

“Further developments need to be monitored closely during the upcoming days, especially in regard to whether case numbers are increasing outside of outbreak contexts,” the institute said in its daily report.

Coronavirus: German slaughterhouse outbreak crosses 1,000

The total number of people infected with the coronavirus at a slaughterhouse in northwestern Germany has risen to 1,029, up from over 600 earlier this week, according to officials.

The outbreak at the Rheda-Wiedenbrück meat processing plant, in the district of Gütersloh near Bielefeld, was made public on June 17. The plant is run by Tönnies – the largest meat processing firm in Germany.

The factory has been closed for 14 days following initial reports of the outbreak, said Thomas Kuhlbusch, the head of the crisis team.

Regional official Sven-Georg Adenauer told a news conference on Saturday that there had been no “significant introduction of coronavirus” into the community.

Throughout Europe and the united states slaughterhouses have have been the center of multiple outbreaks of Covid-19

Slaughterhouses are shutting down across the United States after thousands of cases were confirmed.

Four managers responsible for ensuring social distancing barriers have died.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that at least 5,000 meat and poultry workers have contracted the virus in the US alone.

In Germany, more than 260 cases at a plant in Coesfeld in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia have been confirmed. A slaughterhouse in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein logged over 100 cases while another plant in Bavaria reported around 60 cases.

Cases are growing in France, too, where more than 100 confirmed infections were found in two slaughterhouses in the western part of the country.

Other notable hotspots have emerged in Australia, Spain and Brazil. Link

“The high number of outbreaks in meat processing plants around the world deserves investigation,” Raina MacIntyre, head of the public health school at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, told AFP.