BERLIN: The head of Germany’s disease control agency says measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have saved more than 100,000 lives in the country since the start of the pandemic a year ago.

In a lecture Thursday to students at the Technical University of Munich, Lothar Wieler said his agency had calculated the lethality of a COVID-19 infection to be about 1.14% for Germany, meaning a nationwide spread of the virus could have led to more than 800,000 deaths.

“In our country, we saved ten thousands, if not (a) hundred thousand lives already by these public health measures,” said Wieler, who heads the Robert Koch Institute.

The agency reported a further 14,356 confirmed cases and 321 deaths in Germany overnight, taking the total to more than 2.5 million cases and 72,810 COVID-related deaths.

Wieler told reporters at the U.N. in Geneva on Wednesday that he believes a “third wave” of infections has begun in Germany.