Germany reaches vaccination rate of 71% after one year

Berlin, Dec 28 (IANS) One year after Germany's Covid-19 vaccination campaign began, 70.8 per cent of citizens are fully immunised, according to official figures published by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and the Ministry of Health.Germany has administered almost 147 million doses in one year. However, 21.7 million people remain unvaccinated, and no licensed vaccine is available for four million children aged up to four years, the figures showed on Monday.Nevertheless, the German government has already reached its goal of 30 million vaccinations administered in the last six weeks of the year, according to a statement published by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported."It is our goal to continue the booster campaign over the next few weeks at such a high pace that we can significantly reduce the number of hospitalisations due to the Omicron
variant," said State Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach.The number of confirmed cases of the Omicron variant in Germany increased by 17 per cent from Saturday, bringing the cumulative number to 7,225 as of Sunday, RKI said on Monday.In order to push the German vaccination campaign further, a general vaccination obligation is being discussed. The country has already made vaccination mandatory for healthcare workers.
--IANS int/khz/

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