Germany has paid tribute to the nearly 80,000 people it has lost to the coronavirus, even as the country argues about how to get a grip on another rise in infections.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier led a memorial event at Berlin’s Konzerthaus concert hall with Chancellor Angela Merkel and a few other top officials.
They were joined by five relatives of people who died over the past year in placing a circle of candles in the mostly empty hall.
Mr Steinmeier said that months of focusing on infection rates and other statistics were “understandable, but my impression is that we as a society don’t appreciate often enough that… people stand behind all the figures”.