Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

In 2021 passenger transport continued to be heavily impacted by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

• At the beginning of the year, due to official measures, recommendations to minimize social contact, restrictions on trade and services, and a general reluctance regarding mobility, the number of passengers was below the respective months of the previous year, which had not yet been influenced by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
• As the vaccine campaign continued, demand recovered markedly from March 2021.
• Demand has not yet returned to pre-Covid-19 levels.

Demand for rail freight transport increased sharply, driven by global economic development, almost returning to its pre-Covid-19 level.

DB Group will continue to be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2022. However, we are sticking to the growth tar­­gets for rail and our own growth targets within our Strong Rail strat­­egy. For this reason, we consistently continued our expansion of capacity, primarily in infrastructure, in 2021.