The German Minister of Health defends the application to track the contacts of infected

German Health Minister Jens Spahn defended on Friday plans to use a mobile phone application to detect people who have had contact with the coronavirus.

Spahan, in a statement to the "Morgenmagazin" program of the Second Chain of German Television (ZDF), said that he understood the reasons of the critics but insisted that the goal is important.

"This is sensitive data, data protection. But the goal is that if someone gets it we can quickly find the people with whom they have had contact," said the minister.

"Now the health offices are doing it, they also obtain the information through other ways and contact analogically the people who may have been infected. We want to do it digitally and streamline the process to more effectively interrupt chains of infection," he added.

Spahn added that it is doubtful that the data that users deliver to consortia like Google or Amazon is more secure than that stored by German servers for a limited time.

Regarding the evolution of the pandemic in Germany, Spahn said that it has been possible to reduce new infections to a level that is manageable at the moment but that one must remain alert and achieve the path to "a new routine" by maintaining rules to reduce the danger of contagion.

In Germany, the lifting of some restrictions has been agreed and in some federal states shops and other establishments have started to open.

At the same time, the obligation to wear protective masks in some areas has been imposed - the rule varies according to the federal state - which has generated criticism as it creates the feeling of false security.

"A mask has to be used well so that the risk of infection does not increase but decreases," Spahn admitted.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly warned that the current situation is fragile and that no one knows what effect the lifting of the restrictions will have, which will not be known for two weeks.

The director of Virology at the University Hospital of La Charité, Christian Drosten, has warned that there is a danger that there will be a second wave of infections with far more serious repercussions than the first and that one must remain alert.

According to the latest figures from the John Hopkins University in the USA, in Germany there are 153,129 cases of coronavirus, 103,300 patients have overcome the disease and 5,575 people have died.