Coronavirus politics: KU study praises Germany’s response to COVID-19

A study by a Kingston University team of experts has praised Germany’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic. The study has received wide attention in the foreign media.

Led by Dr Peter Finn, from the university’s School of Law, Social and Behavioural Sciences, the study explained how coronavirus has impacted the politics of democracies around the globe.

“This report illustrates the political nature of the way the COVID-19 pandemic has been handled to date, demonstrating why the political ramifications of the pandemic will take years, if not decades, to play out,” Finn said.

The study, ‘Covid-19 and Democracy, First Cut Policy Analyses: Country Case Studies’, looked at how eight democratic countries (UK, Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Israel, Japan, Taiwan and US) responded to the coronavirus pandemic from April to June this year.

Germany engaged early on

The KU report explained that some countries have shown better results than others when it came to not overloading the public health system or damaging the economy after coronavirus struck at the start of the year.

One of the countries that stood out in the report was Germany. For decades, Germany has been known as a country that has a robust healthcare system and this time it has proved true.

“Germany engaged very early on. When the first outbreaks occurred, the government and health authorities were immediately able to roll out testing. As a consequence, its death rate, although in the thousands, is currently far below the UK,” Finn said.

The KU study did not go unnoticed in the German press. After praising Germany’s response to the pandemic, the KU report was all over the German news outlets, with reports featuring on Yahoo! Nachrichten and N-TV.

The significance of the study was also mentioned in ORF, which is the Austrian equivalent of the BBC.