Germany’s migrant communities and poorer people are bearing the brunt of the Covid pandemic, according to Lothar Wieler, President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s central scientific institution for safeguarding public health.
But Wieler was also quick to point out that the latest figures attributed to him in the media, allegedly showing that 90 per cent of Covid-19 patients on ventilators in Germany had a migrant or ethnic minority background, were way off the mark.
According to the RKI, Wieler was misquoted, and had only referenced three examples from intensive care units at Berlin hospitals where the figure stood at around 50 per cent.
An RKI spokesperson also denied a report this week by Bild, the mass circulation tabloid, that Wieler had called the issue a “taboo” and had complained about “parallel societies” and “language barriers” in ethnic minority groups that routinely ducked Germany’s anti-pandemic measures.
The RKI’s swift reaction comes as no surprise. The German far right has been quick to use such comments for its purposes in the past, falsely claiming that the pandemic was brought to Germany by foreigners and routinely singling out “superspreaders” with an Islamic background.
“In intensive care, we are treating severely ill people – nothing else matters”, said Gernot Marx, head of the DIVI, the German association of ICU and emergency practitioners. “To our knowledge, there is no data available that analyses ethnic backgrounds or language problems at a national level”, the DIVI added, calling the debate “unqualified, discriminating and almost racist.”
Yet high levels of unemployment, financial hardship or crowded housing – which affect people with a migrant or ethnic minority background to a greater extent – are all triggers for spreading the virus and triggering severe cases of Covid-19, data shows.
In addition, jobs which prove difficult for strict social distancing such as contract-working in abattoirs, on building sites or as farm hands see a predominantly higher percentage of foreign labour.
Andreas Pott, Director of the Institute for Migration and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrueck warned against stigmatising these groups: “We are talking of hard work which often means coming into contact with many people and which simply cannot be done from the home office,” he said.
Figures released by the Berlin local government this week showed a clear correlation between unemployment or dependency on social benefits and Covid-19. The study says: “Crowded housing and insufficient access to open spaces and recreational areas like gardens or playgrounds lead to significantly higher infection rates.”
Berlin’s Health Secretary, Dilek Kalayci, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper, “We have to address these social issues and take them into account when we are talking about public health.”
However, population density in the German capital was only one factor in the problem, the study says. It is pointed out that infection rates in much less densely populated Bavaria were even higher than in Berlin.
These findings are similar to those made by an OECD report published in October last year which showed that in Europe people with a migrant background were at twice as likely to get infected than the rest of the population.
Steffen Grimberg is a freelance journalist based in Berlin and Leipzig.
