(Bloomberg) — Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed rapid action to stem Germany’s surge of Covid-19 infections but stopped short of announcing new restrictions after a meeting with state leaders.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Thursday, his first full day as chancellor after succeeding Angela Merkel, Scholz instead leaned on his plan for an aggressive year-end vaccination drive, including booster shots. He plans another meeting next week with Germany’s 16 states and hasn’t ruled out greater contact restrictions over Christmas.
“We want to keep an eye on the current situation and make decisions as quickly as possible,” Scholz said. “Christmas is a big topic.”
Daily infections show signs of peaking, yet intensive-care units remain stretched in parts of Germany, with the number of people hospitalized expected to rise further. Germany’s also bracing for the omicron variant to potentially compound its recent brutal surge.
Germany needs to remain vigilant because of the emergence of a new Covid strain, according to Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s new health minister, who is a Harvard-educated epidemiologist.
“It could be that the omicron variant infects vaccinated people and then causes serious illness among non-vaccinated people,” he said on ZDF television late Thursday. “Our goal is as quickly as possible to vaccinate the population so effectively that we can end the delta wave with as few deaths as can be and avoid the omicron wave.”
Scholz takes over the country’s pandemic battle from Merkel, who often struggled to bring regional leaders on side. German health policy is largely in the hands of the states.
Just under 70% of Germany’s population is fully vaccinated, a rate that lags peers in western and southern Europe. That shortfall is regarded as the main source of a wave of infections since mid-October that’s far outstripped previous outbreaks in Germany.
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Still, contact restrictions have so far mainly targeted the unvaccinated, sparing the inoculated population a full lockdown.
Scholz has called for a vaccination drive involving 30 million shots by the the end of the year and switched course by throwing his support behind a broad mandate to get shots.
“Because a loud minority is against vaccinations and takes radical action, we shouldn’t accuse society as a whole of division,” Scholz said on Twitter. “We have to deal with other opinions, but where people are threatened, we have to stand up.”
(Updates with chart, commebts from health minister, Scholz tweet)
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