The survey underscores a concerning collapse of trust in the country’s disease control and prevention authority, the Robert Koch Institute.
The poll found that 57 per cent of respondents don’t trust the data, while 32 per cent still think the government has credibility when it comes to releasing COVID figures.
One of the reasons cited by Bild for the lack of trust is the fact that large numbers of people hospitalised for other reasons are being falsely counted as COVID patients.
However, the lack of trust also extends in the opposite direction, with many Germans believing the government isn’t accurately reporting the true scale of Omicron infections.
Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, acknowledged last week that the full scope of Omicron’s spread was “not being depicted accurately in the official figures because of false negatives by testing as well as delays in reporting new cases.”
The Robert Koch Institute responded to the poll by blaming local health authorities for not filing health data on time.
The survey also found that a majority of Germans were not satisfied with Berlin’s response to the pandemic.
The recent scandal involving the Mayor of Hamburg will have done little to increase trust in authorities when it comes to official figures.
Peter Tschentscher claimed the unvaccinated represented 95% of COVID cases. After a Senate investigation, the actual figure was revealed to be 14.3%.
Article: Poll: Majority of Germans Don’t Trust Pandemic Statistics