The Ministry of Education and Research of Germany will allocate about 1.6 billion for coronavirus research. This was reported on Tuesday by the DPA agency with reference to its own information.
According to him, about 627 million of this amount is intended for the development of vaccines against coronavirus of the German company BioNTech and the pharmaceutical company CureVac located in the city of Tubingen. At the same time, it is indicated that the funds are in addition to the 2.9 billion already allocated by the German government for health research in 2020.
The main research institutes specializing in COVID-19 research in Germany, according to DPA, are the Helmholtz Center for the Study of Infectious Diseases (HZI) and the German Center for Infectious Research (DZIF). So, HZI received about 32 million, while DZIF received about 5.8 million.
At the same time, it is noted that over the past decade, the German authorities have constantly increased spending on research in the field of health, including biotechnology. For example, if in 2010 a little less than 1.9 billion was allocated for this purpose, then in 2019 — almost 2.5 billion.
According to the Robert Koch Institute (subordinate to the German Ministry of Health), the number of new cases of coronavirus infection in Germany has increased by 9,609 over the past day. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the infection has been detected in 3,163,308 residents of Germany. From the consequences of the disease caused by the coronavirus, 297 patients died in 24 hours in the country. The total number of deaths during the entire epidemic in Germany reached 80,303.