[2006alum]

One other thing to note is that each country classifies its deaths differently, in terms of what the cause of death is attributed to, how quickly a cause is attributed, etc. Here's another piece on this:

Meanwhile, an Italian virologist said the low number in German deaths "is a question no one can really answer".
Giovanni Maga from CNR told Euronews that in Italy a person who tested positive while alive or post-mortem is counted as a coronavirus-death. "I don't know if Germany or France follow the same criteria," he noted.
Maga also stated that healthcare structures are rather similar in northern Italy, France and Germany, making it harder to justify such discrepancies in numbers.

It's possible, for example, that Germany requires autopsies before legally attributing a cause of death - if so, that would put its CFR significantly behind countries like Italy that treat any death of a patient with a positive diagnosis as a COVID-19 death.

But insofar as the death rates in France, Spain, and the UK are all surging now in a way Italy's began to a week ago, if Germany continues to have such a lagging indicator, I would assume it's due to something other than uniformly better patient outcomes.

[2006alum]

One other thing to note is that each country classifies its deaths differently, in terms of what the cause of death is attributed to, how quickly a cause is attributed, etc. Here's another piece on this:

Meanwhile, an Italian virologist said the low number in German deaths "is a question no one can really answer".
Giovanni Maga from CNR told Euronews that in Italy a person who tested positive while alive or post-mortem is counted as a coronavirus-death. "I don't know if Germany or France follow the same criteria," he noted.
Maga also stated that healthcare structures are rather similar in northern Italy, France and Germany, making it harder to justify such discrepancies in numbers.

It's possible, for example, that Germany requires autopsies before legally attributing a cause of death - if so, that would put its CFR significantly behind countries like Italy that treat any death of a patient with a positive diagnosis as a COVID-19 death.

But insofar as the death rates in France, Spain, and the UK are all surging now in a way Italy's began to a week ago, if Germany continues to have such a lagging indicator, I would assume it's due to something other than uniformly better patient outcomes.