by Deborah COLE Agence France Presse BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — Coronavirus cases in Germany are rising at a “very clearly exponential rate”, a top public health institute said Friday, as the EU’s biggest country debated tightening a shutdown. The vice president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases, Lars Schaade, told reporters that highly contagious virus variants were getting the upper hand, wiping out progress seen last month in containing the pandemic. […]