17 people have died at a care home in Germany after a coronavirus outbreak (Picture: EPA)

At least 17 people have died from an outbreak of coronavirus at a retirement home in Wolfsburg, northern Germany.

City officials said 12 residents had lost their battle against Covid-19 on Saturday, with five more deaths occurring in the past 48 hours, according to local media.

There are a total of 145 confirmed coronavirus cases in Wolfsburg, which is about 143 miles West of Berlin. The majority of the city’s cases are the elderly residents from the Hanns-Lilje nursing home.

Coronavirus, which is most severe in over-70s, has invaded care homes across Europe and states in the US. The grim news in Wolfsburg comes after Spanish soldiers helping to fight the pandemic said they were finding elderly patients in retirement homes abandoned and, in some cases, dead in their beds.


An undertaker loads a coffin into a van outside the Hanns-Lilje-Heim senior care home during the coronavirus crisis (Picture: Getty)

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Employees wearing full body protection take a smoking break inside Hanns-Lilje-Heim senior care home during the coronavirus crisis (Picture: Getty)

In America, where there are more cases than anywhere else in the world, at least 146 facilities in 27 states have faced a deadly outbreak. That includes Life Care Center in the Seattle suburbs, where at the time of writing more than 30 people had died of Covid-19, The Washington Post reports.



Germany has fewer deaths than its neighbouring European countries, with 63,929 cases and 560 confirmed fatalities at the time of writing.

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According to health minister Jens Spahn, the country is now testing up to 500,000 people a week for the coronavirus. By contrast, the UK has conducted just 134,946 tests in the entire period since the end of January.

A general view shows a retirement and care home for elderly people where at least 17 people have died of coronavirus (Picture: EPA)

On Friday it was announced that every social care provider in the country would receive deliveries of personal protective equipment including masks. The government said social care workers will start being tested for coronavirus along with NHS staff from next week.

Care home managers have been refusing to accept elderly people discharged from hospitals owing to coronavirus fears.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) will this week release figures on deaths involving Covid-19 in the wider community, such as care homes. These figures are likely to offer detail on how many community deaths involve coronavirus, rather than just looking at deaths in hospitals.

Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific officer, said these ONS figures would provide ‘extra numbers’ but they would not be ‘large’.

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