The lack of post-mortem testing is accurate but there may also be some claim that Germany is better prepared than many countries. It does appear that testing has been done in Germany at an earlier point. Marylyn Addo, who heads the infectiology department at Hamburg’s University Medical Centre, claims this: “One advantage Germany has is that we started doing professional contact tracing when the first cases were reported,” Addo said. “It bought us some time to prepare our clinics for the coming storm.”
With only a small sliver of Austria and Switzerland separating Northern Italy from Germany it would be expected that the death-to-case ratio of the two areas would be similar. Addo suggested, though, that a likely explanation for the discrepancy in figures between Italy and Germany is that while northern Italy’s hospitals are being overrun with new patients, Germany’s are not yet at full capacity and have had more time to clear beds, stock up on equipment and redistribute personnel. It will be interesting to see if that trend holds.
Medical specialists such as Addo also do not believe that the number of unreported cases is statistically significant. “I have yet to see any data that would suggest a large number of untested corona-related deaths that don’t show up in the statistics,” she said.
Overall it appears that the reporting methodology that Germany is using does lend itself to a lower percentage of deaths but it doesn't seem to account for the entire discrepancy. It appears that preparation is also a contributing factor to the statistics. In my travels, and merely through observations, the overall population of Italy appears to be more healthy than the population of Germany so if it is true that lack of post-mortem statistics is accounting for only a small portion of a smaller death-to-case ratio, there must be some other factor(s).