“We are not going this way,” Merkel said after a visit to the Robert Koha Institute (RKI). “We are at the beginning of the phase in which [potēšanos] we’re still advertising where we have more vaccines than people who want to get vaccinated. “
After a slow start to vaccination, Germany significantly accelerated it in the summer, with 42.6% of all adults having fully vaccinated by Tuesday, but 58.5% had already received at least one dose of the vaccine.
However, demand for vaccination has declined over the past two weeks, with the number on Monday being the lowest since February.
The highly contagious Indian or delta variant of the coronavirus has now become dominant in Germany, and the RKI has indicated that at least 85% of adults need to be vaccinated in order to achieve so-called crowd immunity.
This has prompted some to change their approach to the vaccination campaign.
Wolfram Hens, a genetics expert at the University of Saarland and a member of the German Ethics Council, who is advising the government on a vaccination strategy, on Tuesday called on teachers to make vaccination compulsory.
“Teachers and educators have a very special responsibility to the people entrusted to them because of their choice of profession,” Hens said in a statement with Bild.
French President Emanuel Macron was reportedly announced on Monday the mandatory vaccination of health care workers against Covid-19.
Similar decisions have already been taken by Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom.
