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Pass the Salt: The Minute Details that Helped Germany Build Virus Defenses

Reuters

   MUNICH, GERMANY - One January lunchtime in a car parts company, a
   worker turned to a colleague and asked to borrow the salt.

   In that instant, they shared the coronavirus along with the saltshaker,
   scientists have since concluded.

   That their exchange was documented at all is the result of intense
   scrutiny, part of a rare success story in the global fight against the
   virus.

   The coworkers were early links in what was to be the first documented
   chain of multiple human-to-human transmissions outside Asia of
   COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

   They are based in Stockdorf, a German town of 4,000 near Munich in
   Bavaria, and they work at car parts supplier Webasto Group. The company
   was thrust under a global microscope after it disclosed that one of its
   employees, a Chinese woman, caught the virus and brought it to Webasto
   headquarters. There, it was passed to colleagues - including,
   scientists would learn, a person lunching in the canteen with whom the
   Chinese patient had no contact.

   The January 22 canteen scene was one of dozens of mundane incidents
   that scientists have logged in a medical manhunt to trace, test and
   isolate infected workers so that the regional government of Bavaria
   could stop the virus from spreading.

   That hunt has helped Germany win crucial time to build its COVID-19
   defenses.

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