BERLIN: Germany surpassed 2 million coronavirus infections and the death toll from the pandemic reached almost 45,000, experts said on Friday, a day after Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded “very fast action” to curb the deadly virus.
Europe’s biggest economy and most populous country managed the pandemic better than neighbours last spring. But it has seen a sharp rise in cases and deaths recently and daily per capita mortality has often exceeded the U.S. rate since mid-December.
Alarmed by the high infection rate and bracing for the spread of more transmissible variants of the virus, Merkel told top officials from her party on Thursday that she wanted “very fast action”.
Germany’s coronavirus cases increased by 22,368 to 2,000,958, according to the latest date from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases. It was the smallest rise in infections on a Friday for more than two months. A week ago, the number of new cases registered was almost 10,000 higher.
The…