The head of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery has warned that people’s behavior this weekend will be pivotal in determining whether strict shelter-in-place curfews are imposed in Germany to control the spread of the coronavirus.

Helge Braun, 47, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, speaks with DER SPIEGEL about the rapidly rising number of coronavirus infections and about whether more stringent measures will have to be implemented.

The German health-care system is considered one of the best in the world. But the coronavirus is mercilessly exposing its weaknesses, with some hospitals already facing difficulties. Can Germany prevent the kind of collapse seen in Italy?

Germany's federal and state governments have agreed to further tighten restrictions on public life. Here's an overview of what's now allowed and what's not.

The German cabinet on Monday agreed to an unprecedented aid package to prop up the country's economy as the coronavirus pandemic takes hold. Parliament is set to approve the package later this week.

The German chancellor is staying home after being exposed to a doctor who tested positive for the coronavirus. A first test came back negative, but Merkel will keep governing remotely for the time being. What does Germany's line of succession look like, and who would jump in if Merkel gets sick?

The gravest threat posed by the coronavirus is that high-risk groups like the elderly and other high-risk groups will get infected by it. The pressure on staffs at nursing homes is growing. Some patient advocates are calling for emergency contingency plans. Are the facilities safe enough for the people living in them?

Drägerwerk is a world leader in the production of ventilators. In an interview, company head Stefan Dräger, 57, discusses the challenges of keeping up with current demand as the corona crisis accelerates.

The fight against the coronavirus has paralyzed society and the economy. Lockdown measures are fine for the short term, but they threaten to rapidly destroy the economy and erode our existing social order. What should the next steps be?

Some in Germany have the impression that the country can survive a long-term lockdown without suffering any grave consequences. That thinking is dangerous.

Every day, tens of thousands people in Germany seek to get tested for the novel coronavirus. Often, though, they run up against a lack of testing capacity. And it is likely to only get worse. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

The German government failed to obtain enough protective masks for the country. That's one of the reasons Germany has so far refused to require its citizen's to wear them in public. But those facial coverings could be critical in lifting restrictions on public life.

German politicians have begun calling for industry to be shielded from too much environmental protection during the coronavirus crisis. But corporations aren't joining the appeal. They managed to turn CO2 reduction into a competitive advantage long ago.

All of Germany is looking forward to Easter this year, with hopes that the government will soon be able to loosen coronavirus restrictions. But will it? And if so, which ones? By DER SPIEGEL Staff

The Leopoldina National Academy, Germany’s academy of sciences, recommends that schools be reopened soon. Businesses and public authorities are also expected to be reopened gradually. Travel should also be permitted under certain conditions, according to the report, which DER SPIEGEL obtained in advance of publication.

People are growing increasingly impatient over the coronavirus lockdown, and politicians are now debating whether to loosen measures. From a scientific point of view this is a disaster. Measures should actually be tightened until we know more about the virus.

My wife and I recently visited Niagara Falls this past August in our quest to escape some of the summer heat.  I had been there two earlier times as a child and a parent.  The town of Niagara has seen…

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Capuchins are highly intelligent monkeys that live in the tropical forests of Central and South America. In the wild, they use tools to crack open nuts and crabs and have learned to rub crushed millipedes on their backs as mosquito repellant. Easily trained, they are historically recognizable as the classic organ-grinder's monkey and are today widely used in lab experiments and occasionally as service animals. What sorts of tasks are monkey helpers trained to perform to assist the disabled?

Definition: (adjective) Without mercy or pity.
Synonyms: remorseless, ruthless.
Usage: He looked into the pitiless eyes of his enemy and knew then that this would be a fight to the death.
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We study the impact of non-pharmaceutical policy interventions (NPIs) like “stay-at-home” orders on the spread of infectious disease. NPIs are associated with slower growth of Covid-19 cases. NPIs “spillover” into other jurisdictions. NPIs are not associated with significantly worse economic outcomes measured by job losses. Job losses have been no higher in US states that implemented “stay-at-home” during the Covid-19 pandemic than in states that did not have “stay-at-home”. All of these results demonstrate that the Covid-19 pandemic is a common economic and public health shock. The tradeoff between the economy and public health today depends strongly on what is happening elsewhere. This underscores the importance of coordinated economic and public health responses.

Ambient pollution is a byproduct of economic activity. It has been widely reported that COVID-19 and associated lockdowns have generated large improvements in air quality worldwide, including to China's notoriously-poor air quality. We analyze China's official pollution monitor data and account for the large, recurrent improvement in air quality following Lunar New Year (LNY), which essentially coincided with lockdowns in 2020. With the important exception of NO2, China's air quality improvements in 2020 are smaller than we should expect near the pandemic's epicenter: Hubei province. Compared with LNY improvements experienced in 2018 and 2019 in Hubei, we see smaller improvements in SO2 while ozone concentrations increased in both relative and absolute terms (roughly doubling). Similar patterns are found for the six provinces neighboring Hubei. We conclude that whether COVID-19 actually decreased pollution in China depends on the pollutant and reference period considered.

We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents between late March and early April 2020 to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens’ and governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents reacted strongly to the crisis: they report engaging in social distancing and hygiene behaviors, and believe that strong policy measures, such as shop closures and curfews, are necessary. They also believe that their government and their country’s citizens are not doing enough and underestimate the degree to which others in their country support strong behavioral and policy responses to the pandemic. The perception of a weak government and public response is associated with higher levels of worries and depression. Using both cross-country panel data and an event-study, we additionally show that strong government reactions correct misperceptions, and reduce worries and depression. Our findings highlight that policy-makers not only need to consider how their decisions affect the spread of COVID-19, but also how such choices influence the mental health of their population.

Do new societal needs increase charitable giving or simply reallocate a fixed supply of donations? We study this question using IRS datasets and the natural experiment of deadly tornadoes. Among ZIP Codes located more than 20 miles away from a tornado's path, donations by households increase by over $1 million per tornado fatality. We find no negative effects on charities located in these ZIP Codes, with a bootstrapped confidence interval that rejects substitution rates above 16 percent. The results imply that giving to one cause need not come at the expense of another.

Despite widespread interest, there is little systematic evidence on the relationship between income, wealth, and charitable giving. We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to provide descriptive statistics on this relationship. We find that, irrespective of specifica­tion, donative behavior increases with greater resources.

We explored two measures of inequality that described the full income distribution in cities. One measure is an income gini based on family incomes in 1929 for 33 cities and in 1933 for up to 48 cities in 1933 were spread throughout the country. We also estimated gini coefficients that made use of contract rents for renters and implicit rents for home owners for up to 955 cities throughout the country. We were able to expand to all counties when looking at a top-end inequality measure, the number of taxpayers per family. All three measures varied substantially across the country. We show the correlations between the various measures and also estimate the relationship between the measures and various relief programs developed by governments at all levels during the period.

Many countries in Eastern Europe are taking drastic measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 -- in part because their health-care systems may not be up to the task.

With the wave of coronavirus infections washing over Europe, countries have turned inward to protect themselves. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has struggled to define the EU's role in the crisis as border checks have been reintroduced across the Continent.

Family members aren't allowed into hospitals nor can they take part in funerals. Crematoriums are overloaded. The horrors of coronavirus still have a firm hold on northern Italy.

The European Commission is limited in what it can do to combat the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this only makes it more imperative for Brussels to set the correct priorities.

In Spain, the number of coronavirus deaths is climbing faster than in Italy. Dr. Inés Lipperheide is fighting to save her patients in an overcrowded intensive care unit. She reports conditions straight out of a "horror film."

One EU country after the other is moving to restrict public life. The Dutch government has opted for less drastic measures, hoping for herd immunity and relying on the common sense of its people. But the country has still had to make adjustments to its policies.

The danger of a new euro crisis is growing. Weak member states like Italy need help if they're going to survive the coronavirus lockdown financially. But the call for euro bonds has been met with stiff resistance -- especially from the Germans.

European researchers have developed a new technology aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus. Called PEPP-PT, it has been designed to conform with EU data privacy rules. Its developers spoke with DER SPIEGEL about the app.

In an interview, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio calls for greater solidarity among Europeans and for the EU to come up with an aid package comparable to the one recently passed in the United States.

The German government's rejection of eurobonds is selfish, small-minded and cowardly. Existing mechanisms will not be enough to contain the crisis we are facing. We need to act now.

Faced with a growing economic crisis, many European Union member states are clamoring for the introduction of so-called corona bonds. Just like it was in the euro crisis, though, Germany is opposed. In the end, Berlin may not have a choice. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

L'Europa è più di una mera alleanza di egocentrici. Non esistono alternative agli Eurobond in una crisi come questa.

Europa es más que una coalición de ególatras. En una crisis como esta no existe alternativa para los eurobonos.

While Spain continues to battle a dire coronavirus outbreak, the situation is vastly better in neighboring Portugal. But why?

On Thursday, European leaders will discuss how to navigate the block through the economic crisis triggered by the novel coronavirus. In a DER SPIEGEL interview, European Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni talks about what is at stake and the need to find at least 1 trillion euros.

We study a novel policy tool—interest rate uncertainty—that can be used to discourage inefficient capital inflows and to adjust the composition of external accounts between short-term securities and foreign direct investment (FDI). We identify the trade-offs faced in navigating between external balance and price stability. The interest rate uncertainty policy discourages short-term inflows mainly through portfolio risk and precautionary saving channels. A markup channel generates net FDI inflows under imperfect exchange rate pass-through. We further investigate new channels under different assumptions about the irreversibility of FDI, the currency of export invoicing, risk aversion of outside agents, and effective lower bound in the rest of the world. Under every scenario, uncertainty policy is inflationary.