BERLIN — Germany’s top health official is encouraging more people to be vaccinated, saying on Saturday that if vaccination rates do not rise, the country’s hospitals would be overrun by COVID-19 Surge patients by the end of the year.
Moreover, 61 percent of Germans, or 50.9 million individuals, have had all of their vaccinations, although this is lower than in other European countries. For weeks, the daily vaccination rate has been declining, while new illness cases have been increasing.
Germany’s disease control office recorded 10,835 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, up from 10,303 the week before.
If vaccination rates do not rise, the chairman of Germany’s Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine has warned that COVID-19 cases in hospital intensive care wards would skyrocket in the fall.
According to data, Berlin virologist Christian Drosten noted that the concept of a “lazy autumn” is a hazardous assumption and that contact limits may have to be reinstated if new infections continue to rise. According to Drosten, some Germans do not value vaccinations enough because the pandemic’s early stages were less severe in Germany than in other European countries.
Other European countries, according to Drosten, have had a “terrible experience as a society.” “Many people died, there was a complete lockdown when people were only permitted to go out shopping for a certain reason and the streets were monitored by the military.”
