in this country because it's about protecting older people people with previous conditions a vulnerable group. and for this we need to ensure our solidarity we need to ensure that reason government things and we have to have a heart for these people as well and i hope that we will manage to stand this test very well minister thank you madam chancellor ladies and gentlemen our top goal remains containing the spread of this virus in germany and in europe to slow it down so that we do not. endanger our health care system i said this on monday and in my statement on wednesday this is. driving all of this issues that we're making and our health policy and i work with the robert cock institute the federal states the hospitals on the ground it's important that.

we spread this message to our communities the slower the virus spreads in germany the better the health care system will be able to tackle it that's what it's about the virus is here we're going to have to deal with it and the question is how quickly it spreads and that will decide quite significantly how well our health care system copes with these illnesses because the fewer people who are sick at the same time the better the physicians and nurses in hospitals etc will be able to offer them the care they need. so what's important is that the symptoms linked to this repertory illness are ones we're familiar with these are not symptoms that the hospitals don't deal with every day but when there are serious cases 4 of pneumonia. and all of the respiratory needs that have ventilation needs

i.c.u. needs that they can arise from there so that's where there's a bottleneck in our health care for say that 20. 28000 i.c.u. beds and about 25000 that have ventilation systems if you. look at the population that is a good to very good level but at the same time. these beds are already being used in many cases so the real challenge is to slow the spread of the virus which is why we have calls for. major events to be canceled and we've asked people to change behavior this is true for public administrations for companies for the communities that we live in it's down to every one of us so let me just say again it's very good that berlin has decided to ensure that the football match will take place without spectators i'm very grateful that many federal states had state assembly decrees that they passed. with

court injunctions to ensure that events over $1000.00 with over $1000.00 people can be canceled i believe that the citizens on the ground but also the people responsible when they have such a clear measure it will be easier to implement if we all do what we can to make sure this starts anything about a 1000 but let me say that that doesn't mean that every meeting under 1000 where every event under 1000 people should continue it depends on the intensity. of the rock concerts and the dance a cloud is different then if it's an exam where you can sit people one meter apart so that's another issue i know that with football there are many fans who are really suffer that they can't go to matches but i am going to rely on football fans having

a heart for the people that we want to protect people with chronic diseases people who are elderly. they are at greater risk for severe cases if you hear 80 percent or mild cases no symptoms but you for the young people if you haven't got any chronic illnesses this is something that it's not a high risk where you can think if you're a young person well it's not going to kill me so i'll just continue to live my life as i normally words. but i think that we need to communicate this into families that it's about protecting the most vulnerable members of our families our grandparents parents. that we all have to do without some of the pleasures of everyday life to protect the vulnerable ones in our society and if each of us in our family in our communities make this decision that we as a society just think about events where there are a lot of people and be careful thinking about family reunions or milestone

birthdays weddings funerals i think we have to be careful about this and do a bit contain the spread of the virus and i'm very glad that many companies have. decided to allow their employees to work from home wherever possible it's not always proposal of course but to make it possible where it is possible and to say that sick leave has been fair cilla taters made easier you can do it by phone you can get a sick note when you call your doctor here in germany and there are other regulations that we've also done to ease things up and these are clever decisions they're very much in the interest of the companies of the employees but society as a whole now is the german government we are working on supporting these decisions by creating a conducive environment to make these issues easier in these decisions easier also looking at what other things we can do to shore up the economy and to help decision

makers make difficult decisions because health comes 1st it comes ahead of economic . but the same time we need to keep the economic issues and the impact of the virus on the economy in view but despite our decisions we have to ensure that our society continues to function and it well despite this epidemic so it's a point to strike a balance here between even tightening our belts doing without and in everyday life they can continue thank you mr chairman madam chancellor minister ladies and gentlemen from a scientific point let me give your sense of where i would presume in this epidemic since the 6th of january in the institute we have been intensely analyzing this issue with increasing intensity. and therefore i feel we are in a position to give you an assessment of how this disease is spreading. and we

know and madam chancellor quite rightly just said that it is a pandemic virus this is a virus that will affect 60 to 70 percent of humanity. but what we don't know is at what speed but i think that every one of you can imagine that the. longer it takes the better it is firstly because it gives us a chance to develop a vaccine against it secondly it means that we will have better treatment for it as time passes and another important aspect for gaining time is that the number of people who have to be looked after by the health care system is lower because these are all measures that we have to bear in mind if you look at the climate conditions it's important to take a systematic approach here when it comes to the methods of slowing down the spread of the virus so we have to slow down its spread

a virus of this kind doesn't spread like a wave going through germany it will see. right in certain regions you can see this in europe if you look at europe i'm often asked why is it the case that so many people have already died in italy where there are only 2 who have died in germany what do you germans doing differently then your talent colleagues but the point is that right from the word go we have very systematically called on our physicians to test. suspect of cases thankfully we have the ability to offer these tests on a large level in germany so that means that in and we could look at the spread of this epidemic in a very early phase now if you imagine an epidemic like a curve however steep or flat it is then they'll be countries in europe that are further along the curve for their rights and we're further left but we will be say moving up and the number of cases will be increasing here and

more people will die here and many will have very severe cases of the lawyers so what do we have to do. we didn't just think about that there analyses and we had exchanges with other countries that are impacted on by the virus more strongly than or less strongly than i so we'll be doing this on the level of the health ministers within europe but also the national health institutes like the robert carr institute. so we exchange ideas and work on common. approaches you can see on the robert cock interview there are a number of recommendations that were constantly updating so these recommendations are ones that we adapt as the situation unfolds in terms of who our contact person is how we should track how the virus has spread how we have to deal with people who might have the virus so these a systematic approaches based on our own analyses and then i was these of our

colleagues in other countries and we exchange these ideas to get a best practice approach so slowing down the spread of the virus is something that we have been emphasizing for a number of weeks and that will continue to be the case depending on how long it will take it's likely to take months it might take years to spread through our country the longer it takes the better it is not me i can't emphasize that enough when we have a group that we know will have a very serious case of the virus if they're infected. and. those that we would say are chronically ill and the elderly and very elderly are most at risk and it's about protecting them how can we protect them well the best way of protecting them is by not exposing them to the risk of infection and if you think about the fact that certain events can no longer be

visited obviously these are vents where there are a lot of people and there's much more chance of getting infected if there are a lot of people in contact and this is also true of places where older people might be subjected to the virus and we are working on recommendations as to how to protect this vulnerable group. another aspect apart from slowing down the vault the spread of the virus protecting the vulnerable groups the next aspect that's important one that we keep referring to is the fact that the hospitals need to be prepared they need to have a level of readiness so that the clientele of the people who are coming to them will be a different group than they normally get these will be people with severe respiratory . diseases and with pneumonia and they will need special support some of them will be in the i.c.u. some of them will need ventilation and this is why it's so important that we keep

this group as small as possible so that the hospitals have the capability of providing them with the care they need and this is what we're calling for year for the community all of the decision makers the mare's. status and billy's and the hospitals to have to be prepared for the fact that they will have more patients than we have now this is the very beginning of an epidemic. and they need to set up their strategies their business plans etc so that they have to be able to deal with as many of these patients as possible so that these patients get the health care that they need thank you. thank you mr avila now before we proceed to a q. and a let me just give you 3 rules of play please we have to finish by 1245 because our minister has to leave. then because of my list of calls for the fire i can see that there are a great number of questions i'd like to ask you to ask one question and at most a clarification question and i can promise that we will get to you on that mr

miller's 1st. at the back. you know if you were. so you talked about the importance of responsibility in the community. would it. be over will this affect the level of decision making will you get i transposed that from the national level of my to my well we're going to work in with the ledge the structures that we have now we can always talk about changing things in the future but we have had the experience in other situations as well for example when there was the banking and financial crisis 20082009 we were well able to coordinate an excellent cooperation. between the levels of government the same is true for the

refugee crisis. i mean there could be i certainly wouldn't agree that it's necessary to change. the levels of organization and i mean if you have a football match taking place without spectators law enforcement of course in place to ensure that it happens. soon. the stuff up and stuff to. settle this is just a question that the video conference yesterday. in the people. of haiti if you look at it you'll see it was. you know. there was some mention by the european commission president rousseff underlying that money from the e.u. that hasn't been spent to be given back i think i've understood that correct think

. this is. where we have to have new regulations. around here you funding to remember say a little tough to stop park and feel i think the ability pact is flexible enough for unusual situations and that means that a country like italy. where the whole question of the stability pact will play a role that we obviously aren't going to say that it's really can't invest in their health system because you know we've got this stability pact and debt regulations this is an extraordinary situation our debt break that all of the tools that we have in place for this is flex to.