Selina Schulze Spüntrup

After a good year of the Covid-19 pandemic, German companies have received less coronavirus aid than policymakers had allocated. This is the finding of a report published by the ifo Institute’s Dresden Branch.

The organ donation rate in Germany fell only slightly in 2020, the year of the coronavirus. In many other European countries, however, it plummeted. This is the finding of a report published by the ifo Institute’s Dresden Branch to mark Germany’s Organ Donation Day. “Despite the extraordinary strain on hospitals, and especially on intensive care units, the number of organ donors remained relatively constant during the coronavirus pandemic in Germany, albeit at a comparatively low level,” says Selina Schulze Spüntrup, a researcher at the ifo Institute’s Dresden Branch.

Effective containment of the pandemic calls for targeted local measures rather than a national approach. Since lockdown measures were introduced, new infections have increasingly become concentrated in regional hotspots. “To avoid jeopardizing the economic and social recovery that is now starting to get underway, new lockdown measures should be taken only in those places where they are actually necessary,” explains ifo researcher Selina Schulze Spüntrup.