FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany must review its COVID-19 vaccination strategy to deal with the Omicron variant and ensure the country is able to rapidly develop a new vaccine to deal with a potentially variant future more deadly, said Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach.
Karl Lauterbach, who was appointed health minister last month, made the comments in an interview with Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.
“If we have a variant that is as contagious as Omicron, but significantly more deadly, we will have to be able to develop and produce a new vaccine in a very short time,” said the minister.
The German government intends to put in place a permanent system to be able to buy and supply vaccines quickly and at any time because new serious epidemics could arrive, added Karl Lauterbach.
“We must not fall into the naive hypothesis that (the pandemic, editor’s note) will soon be over. It is not over,” he said.
Germany closed large vaccination centers in several states this summer after seeing a drop in demand for vaccination before it started to rise again.
According to the Robert Koch institute (RKI) specializing in infectious diseases, the Omicron variant now represents 44% of coronavirus contaminations in Germany.
(Vera Eckert report, French version Matthieu Protard)