German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach on Saturday defended a mandatory vaccine against Covid-19, saying that Omicron infection “does not necessarily immunize against the next type” and there is no guarantee it will not become more dangerous.
In an interview with the daily “Die Welt”, the minister warned that “Omicron infection does not necessarily protect against the next alternative. To think that the alternative Omicron is the end of the pandemic is naive.”
“There is nothing that can guarantee that it will not turn into a much more dangerous formula,” he cautioned.
Lauterbach expressed his conviction that a mandatory vaccine would help better protect the population, although there are people who will be excluded and will not be vaccinated, even when prescribed.
In Germany, the first parliamentary debate on mandatory vaccination will take place only in the last week of January, and not at the beginning of the year, as was initially planned.
However, Chancellor Olaf Schulz and Health Minister Lauterbach maintained the goal of ending the legislative process “in the first quarter of the year”, without specifying when the new law would enter into force.
The regional powers on Friday called for “a new direction”, as well as “speed and leadership”, as Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Henrik Fust, said, “there should be no feeling” that this central question “is being used for tactical political games”.
