Coronavirus deaths in Germany pass 3,000

Germany has reported 3,254 deaths of COVID-19 as of Wednesday morning, an increase of 285 from the previous day, according to the Robert Koch Institute, the federal government agency for disease control and prevention.

Meanwhile, the country's infection rate on a daily basis continued to drop as the number of new confirmed cases increased by 2,486 over the past 24 hours, raising the total to 127,584, RKI figures showed.

At the height of the pandemic in Germany, more than 6,000 new infections had been recorded by RKI in a single day.

The estimated number of people in Germany who had already recovered from COVID-19 went up by 4,400 within one day to 72,600 on Wednesday, according to RKI.

According to RKI, the rising fatality rate among COVID-19 patients in Germany was due to the increasing number of coronavirus transmissions in old people's and nursing homes.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the minister presidents are scheduled to discuss new policies to combat the pandemic, as current restrictions on public activity are due to expire on April 19. By then, most of the restrictions in Germany had been in force for around four weeks.

"Every day that the contact ban is lifted too soon can have dramatic consequences for the health of many people," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the German newspaper Rheinische Post on Wednesday.

"We need an exit strategy that carefully takes all risks into consideration," said Maas.