The Big Brother Germany cast still doesn't know about the coronavirus pandemic

Jochen Schropp — (Image credit: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

When Germany's edition of Big Brother started its latest season, COVID-19 was a seemingly isolated problem.

On Feb. 6, 14 contestants entered the Big Brother house and were sealed off from the outside world as the new coronavirus continued to spread throughout China. But since then, the COVID-19 has become a global pandemic — and they have no idea.

Contestants on Big Brother, in all its iterations, are put in a house together with no access to what's happening outside. Those competing the Canadian version of the show were just told about it on Monday, though they'd only been sequestered for about a week. The news break came amid concerns over whether production of Big Brother Canada could even continue; contestants were given the option to leave the show and all decided to stay on.

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Germany's show says it'll reveal the situation to the contestants in a special Tuesday edition of the show. For a preview of what it could look like, check out when the American cast found out the results of the 2016 election below. Kathryn Krawczyk

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.