“We need at least 5 million vaccinations for a safe autumn
and winter,” Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted.
More than 61% of the German population, or 50.9 million
people, are fully vaccinated, but that’s less than in other European countries.
The daily vaccination rate has been dropping for weeks, while new infection
cases have been going up again.
On Saturday, Germany’s disease control agency reported
10,835 new COVID-19 cases, up from 10,303 a week ago.
“The number of people who have been vaccinated is too low to
prevent an overburdening of the health system,” the health minister told daily
Hannoversche Zeitung. He said currently 90% of COVID-19 patients in intensive
care are unvaccinated, the German news agency dpa reported.
The head of Germany’s Association for Intensive and
Emergency Medicine also warned of a strong increase of COVID-19 cases in the
hospital’s intensive care wards in the fall, if the vaccinations don’t go up.
Christian Karagiannidis told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper:
“If we don’t get up the vaccination rate significantly by October, we will have
a really strong increase of coronavirus cases in intensive care in the fall.”
Berlin virologist Christian Drosten said the idea of “a
relaxed autumn is a risky assumption” and warned that contact restrictions may
have to be implemented again if new infections keep going up, dpa reported.
Drosten said some Germans don’t appreciate vaccines enough
because the earlier phases of the pandemic were less devastating in Germany
than in other European countries.
“They have had a horrible experience as an entire society,”
Drosten said of other European countries. “Many deaths, a real lockdown, where
one was only allowed to go out for shopping for a reason, and where the streets
were patrolled by the military.”
In Germany, 92,325 people have died of COVID-19, according
to the Robert Koch Institute. Other European countries have seen many more
deaths even though their populations are lower: Britain has had over 133,000;
Italy had 129,000 and France has seen over 115,000 dead.