A sharp difference in the number of coronavirus cases between western Germany and the former communist East has emerged as a new divide, three decades after reunification.
The five states that once made up the bulk of East Germany are among the regions of the country least affected by the pandemic. (Berlin, located in the East but politically divided in the Cold War, has fared less well).
No scientific study has analyzed the phenomenon, but virologists, economists and politicians say part of the explanation could lie in the underlying East-West differences that still exist—the legacy of a 41-year separation that ended on Oct. 3, 1990, when the two Germanys signed the agreement that reunited them. Factors that have long handicapped the East, including an aging, less affluent population, may have shielded it from Covid-19.
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