The German Health Minister, Jens Spahn, warned that the country is affected by a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and asked to reinforce measures to stop the peak coronavirus cases.
“Currently, we are experiencing an essentially unvaccinated pandemic, and it is massive“he said, pointing out that intensive care beds are in short supply again, since the increase in occupancy in the last week was 15 percent.
Likewise, the Society of German Hospitals indicated that seriously ill patients of covid-19 increased 40 percent in seven days.
The fourth wave
“The fourth wave of the pandemic progresses, as we feared, because the number of vaccinated people is not enough, “confirmed Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch epidemiological surveillance institute, and regretted that sanitary measures are not respected to enter public places.
Spahn asked the regions, which have competence in health matters, to tighten the rules for the unvaccinated in the event of an upturn in infections, for example forbidding them access to some public places or demanding a negative diagnostic test, which are expensive in the country.
“It is not about harassment” of the unvaccinated, but about “avoiding saturation of the health system,” he said.
The minister also stated that he wished speed up booster shots, recommended for now to those over 70 years of age, six months after having completed the first cycle.
Covid-19 in Germany
Germany has registered an increase in covid-19 cases in recent days. On Wednesday, more than 20,000 new cases were registered in 24 hours and 194 deaths, according to official figures.
The outgoing Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has shown her concern at the figures in recent days and said she was “very sorry” to see that “between two and three million Germans over 60 have not yet been vaccinated.”
According to figures from the Robert Koch Institute, 66.8 percent of the populationi.e. 55.6 million people in Germany, they are fully vaccinated.
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