[Reporter] The COVID-19 outbreak came to Germany on January 19th
when a businesswoman from Shanghai arrived for two days of meetings near Munich
with her German partners.
After she was diagnosed a few days later
her contacts were quickly traced and tested
And the first cluster of infected Germans was identified and isolated.
Dr. Uwe Janssens leads the German Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine Association.
And she infected this man this man infected, five others and in the end we had 16 patients.
And then nothing happened.
Then came spring break.
When many German and Italian students make their way to the Alpine villages of Austria to go skiing.
It turns out there was one super spreader.
In the town of Ischgl, a bartender who thought he had a cold was not ill enough to skip work.
He infected hundreds of young people.
Including many Germans.
Martin Sturmer is a German biochemist who was himself caught up in the epidemic.
Yeah, we've been to Austria for skiing
and two days before we left our holidays and we got the message that
the complete region is called a risk area.
And when we came back
because my wife and I we work for a medical lab
and they said before you come back to the lab you have to be in quarantine
and we will have to do a test.
And so we did a test and it was positive.
He just kept going to work I guess I didn't feel sick enough to stay at home.
[Reporter] Yilmaz Gulum reports for Austrian Public Broadcasting.
There was no it not yet an understanding of what could happen.
Up to 50% of people who have the virus don't show any symptoms at all
and the very large number of people show only very very mild symptoms.
Now it depends on the capacity of a country to test how many people can come to tests per day
to isolate the people that are infected, to isolate them from the rest of us.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, a scientist by profession
was the first Western leader to take action about COVID-19.
She estimated that up to 70 percent of the German population could contract the virus.
That was the first time that for me my perception of the whole situation changed.
And when she said up to 70 percent
I just made a quick calculation in my head.
If one percent of infected people died which was at the time they assumed fertility rate.
But all right, 70 percent of Germany and one percent dies.
That means roughly half a million people will die in Germany.
And that was for me like, wow this is not just the flu.
This will change a lot of things for a long time.
[Reporter] Germany quickly began developing thousands of test kits.
Far more than any other Western country.
Germany has ramped up quickly
and is now testing 500,000 people per week.
For instance, everybody came in from Italy or from skiing or from the risk area in Italy.
It was isolated and was tested and everybody surrounding --
The family was isolated.
So I think at the moment this led to the point that
we don't have so many old people getting infected.
So if you look at our overall positively tested population
you see many younger people below at the age of 60 which have been tested positive
and therefore we have not so much severe ill people in our population, in our testing population.
And everyone has started to establish the test and as soon as.
[Reporter] Melanie Brinkman is a German virologist.
And I think that's the big advantage we had and I like to compare to an iceberg.
So I think we saw a much bigger tip of the iceberg than other countries, as Italy for example.
And I think we have gained a lot of time
and now have time to prepare the hospitals for for the patients that it will come eventually
[Reporter] Once the wave of infection arrives, Germany will be far better prepared
than other Western countries to handle it.
For example, Germany has invested in greater per capita proportion of intensive care beds and ventilators.
Almost three times as many as Canada.
In Germany, there are a lot of hospital beds per capita
and a lot of ICU beds per capita.
For example, in Germany we have 34 ICU beds per 100,000 inhabitants.
That's a lot.
For comparison, in Italy we have 8.4 per 100,000.
And so we have four times the beds.
So I think we can handle the situation a little bit better than the Italian people.
Many German experts feel that the country's low fatality rate of COVID-19 patients
has a lot to do with the relatively low number of serious cases they are dealing with.
But that could change.
Dr. Karl Lauterbach is an epidemiologist and member of the German parliament.
I think a tidal wave is coming.
And we will see a sharp increase in both the number of infected --
infected people and also the number of let's see people having severe disease
and people dying unfortunately.
So that will happen but I do assume that we will not get close to the numbers
I hope at least that we unfortunately currently observe in France, Spain or Italy.
So I was lucky at the end and yeah
but I think it has changed my view on the complete epidemic.
We should respect the virus, should respect the illness.
But we don't have to be in a panic mode
and don't have to fear this infection.
[Reporter] Right now Germany has many fewer COVID-19 deaths per capita compared to their neighbours.
Almost 7 times fewer than France.
30 times fewer than Spain.
35 times fewer than Italy.
But experts here insist that does not lead to overconfidence.
We are not becoming overconfident at all.
We are very well aware that in a couple of weeks we may be in big trouble.
In the town of Mendon, a symbol of Germany's determination to win the battle
against this virus.
This school gym has been outfitted to receive anyone who is caught disobeying quarantine restrictions.
First Alderman Sebastian Arlt says the forcible confinement will be accomplished if necessary
with the help of the police.
Germany has given the world a positive lesson in how to deal with this pandemic.
Terence Mckenna, CBC News, Toronto