German MPS to vote on making vaccines compulsory
Country could be second in Europe to require jabs as chancellor-in-waiting vows to back the measure
GERMANY could make coronavirus vaccination compulsory under plans announced yesterday.
Olaf Scholz, set to be sworn in as chancellor next week, said his government would put an inoculation law before parliament within weeks.
“I will support it as an MP,” Mr Scholz said, but he pledged to allow them a free vote. It means Germany could become the second European country to make the vaccination a legal requirement for all adults, following Austria.
Greece yesterday announced it is to make vaccination mandatory for over60s, with tough fines for refuseniks.
Mr Scholz has been under intense pressure from regional leaders to order a new national lockdown, but he insisted vaccination was his priority.
“The current issue facing us is vaccination and boosters, which is a huge task,” he told Bild newspaper. “So many have not been vaccinated – that is the reason we have a problem today.”
“You can’t just watch the situation heartlessly. If we had a higher vaccination rate, we would have a different situation.” The German rate is around the same as the UK’S, with 68.5 per cent of adults fully jabbed.
But it is lower than countries like Spain and Portugal and has been blamed for a surge in infections in the past month. Public support for compulsory vaccination has risen, with opinion polls putting it at 70 per cent compared to just 22 per cent a few months ago.
Mr Scholz set a target of 30 million jabs by Christmas, and said compulsory vaccination could be introduced in February or March, once everyone has the chance to be fully vaccinated. Greece yesterday announced over-60s will be fined €100 (£85) a month until they get jabbed. “Of the 580,000 unvaccinated over the age of 60, only 60,000 set up appointments to get vaccinated in November,” said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the prime minister.
“But it is mainly people over 60 who require hospital treatment and sadly lose their life.” Around a quarter of Greece’s population is still unvaccinated. The new regulation will come into effect on Jan 16, and fines will be added to people’s tax bills.
The death toll from Covid in Greece, which has a population of 10 million, exceeded 18,000 this week. Intensive care units are close to capacity.
In Austria details emerged yesterday of plans for fines up to €7,200 (£6,127) from February. It was the first country in Europe to announce compulsory vaccination. Under the draft bill, Austrians over the age of 12 will have to be vaccinated unless they have health exemptions or are pregnant.
Doctors in South Africa are experiencing a surge of cases linked to the new omicron variant. “We’re snowed under. It has exploded around here,” Dr Sharony Cohen, who runs a private practice in Johannesburg’s affluent Parktown North suburb, said.
“It is very early days, we will have to wait and see in the next week or two. This appears to be very, very infectious.
“This is so stressful – the sheer number,” he added.
Hatzollah, a private ambulance service run by the city’s Jewish community, has kept records of Covid infections since the pandemic began.
It reports a “staggering” surge in the last two and half weeks: from receiving no calls to more than 60 a day.
Based on the current rate of increase, the omicron wave will soon eclipse South Africa’s summer delta wave, said a healthcare worker at Hatzollah.
So far, the cases were “mild” and most patients were resting at home with equipment to check oxygen levels.
Cases are primarily in upper and middle-class neighbourhoods where patients are more likely to have been vaccinated and have access to private healthcare.
“The only patients we have had who are not vaccinated are children. So far everyone seems to be ok,” said Dr Cohen.
Experts warned that more severe cases could be going unreported in poorer neighbourhoods and that it was far too early to tell if the variant was more dangerous than delta.
They warned a grimmer picture could emerge when the new variant hits less vaccinated populations.
“Most of the cases that we know about happened among those who were either vaccinated or had a prior infection or were young. So most had some immune protection,” said Dr Richard Lessells, at the University of Kwazulunatal.
“The variant seems to spread very easily. The problem is that even if many people are protected against a severe form of the disease, it will reach people who are not protected, who are not vaccinated, or people whose protection has waned over time.”
Dr Lessells said that omicron would be “even worse” when it spread across Africa, where vaccination rates are lower.
Scientists say omicron is almost entirely behind an explosion of cases in South Africa’s Gauteng province, which contains Johannesburg and the nation’s capital, Pretoria.
Over the past two weeks, hospital admissions have tripled in Gauteng to more than 450, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
Tshwane, the northern part of Gauteng province, which includes Pretoria, is the epicentre of the omicron spread. Authorities said that almost 90 per cent of Covid hospitalised patients there were unvaccinated. South African demographics differ from the UK. Only about six per cent of the population are over 65, meaning that older individuals who are more vulnerable may take time to present severe symptoms.
Africa’s most industrialised nation has been hit harder by the pandemic than any other on the continent. The country of 60 million people has recorded just under 90,000 Covid deaths, but excess deaths are thought to be far higher.
The Medical Research Council says there have been more than 270,000 excess deaths in the country, almost twice the UK’S figure.