The economy is sounding the alarm: 350,000 Germans are currently in quarantine

When the number of infected people increases, so does the army of contacts who have to go into isolation. An analysis platform comes to 350,000 people who are currently in quarantine in Germany. Presence companies such as the skilled trades feel this.

In view of the rapidly increasing number of infections in Germany, more and more people have to be in quarantine – with growing consequences for the economy. Risklayer, a corona observation and analysis platform on the Internet based in Karlsruhe, has now come to more than 350,000 people in quarantine based on reports from the districts. At the end of September there were 140,000. The cases of self-isolation and parents who have to stay at home because schools or daycare centers are closed are not counted.

In view of this development, the economy is sounding the alarm. "As the number of infections increases, the risk for our companies that employees will not be able to come to work either because of an infection or because of a quarantine ordered by the health department," says the President of the Central Association of German Crafts (ZDH), Hans Peter Wollseifer. "We cannot afford social and private carelessness in the truest sense of the word, because it goes hand in hand with operational and economic losses."

Federal and state governments have decided that they want to avoid a lockdown for the economy for as long as possible. But in the republic a kind of informal thinning of the companies is now emerging. This is already becoming clear in clinics that are complaining about the sharp rise in the number of staff in intensive care units who are either infected or in quarantine. Business associations also warned in the first wave that employees would be absent when parents had to look after their children at home. In terms of economic growth overall, the effects are currently still limited and amount to a GDP effect of 0.1 to 0.2 percent, says Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank. Compared to all other factors, this is still of secondary importance. "However, the effect is likely to be significantly greater for individual areas such as health care and trade, where presence is important," he admitted.