The threat of a second wave of the Coronavirus could be felt tangibly in Germany this morning, when staff in many of the country's biggest hospitals arrived on duty to find beds covered with beach towels.
Just as tourists from the country tend to dominate the sunbathing facilities at holiday hotels' swimming pools by rising early from their slumbers before the crack of dawn to stake their claims to the establishments' sunloungers, so it was today with thousands of beds in hospitals from Hannover to Hamburg, and from Berlin to Berchtesgaden.
A nurse at a hospital in Frankfurt told us:
"I came on duty at 6am, and there were already several garish-looking beach towels draped across beds, but nobody in sight."
Another nurse, this time in the southern city of Munich, said:
"The people feel like a second wave of the Coronavirus is on its way, and they are preparing themselves for it. It's a German characteristic to prepare well for something, rather than sleeping in and being disappointed."
An English doctor, who works at a large hospital in Hamburg, said:
"At least we now know they're not taking the piss out of the lazybones British tourists in on their holidays in Spain."
