SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 12.4.2023
Liz and I just returned from our well documented weeks long trip to Berlin and Frankfurt. We were both felled by a brutal virus sweeping Germany.
We saw few people wearing protective face masks.
Germans were coughing everywhere we went. The manager of the Freddy Lecks Waschsalon told us “60 percent” of the business were out with the flu virus.
The manager at our hotel in Berlin chided us when we talked about being current on our Covid boosters. “Some people collect stamps. Other people collect Covid boosters.”
Now Deutsche Welle is reporting the cautionary words from the German health ministry.
Deutsche Welle 12.4.2023
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach on Monday said it was important for at-risk individuals to have their coronavirus vaccinations in advance of the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Lauterbach, himself a trained epidemiologist, said the takeup rate of newly adapted boosted shots designed to fight current COVID-19 variants was so far disappointing.
With three weeks to go until Christmas Day, Lauterbach said it was “the optimal time” for people identified as vulnerable to have the COVID-19 shot.
This would allow the vaccine to take full effect before the large social gatherings and travel that often take place at Christmas, he said.
Germany’s Standing Commission on Vaccination recommends an annual booster vaccination for people with an increased risk of a serious course of the disease.
The minister stressed that an infection was not a simple cold and that the virus remained a real threat to people with chronic health issues.
“At the moment the danger posed by COVID is actually being underestimated,” he said.
Lauterbach was speaking after a meeting about the long-term health effects of coronavirus with healthcare, medicine and science representatives.
“The problem of Long COVID has not yet been solved,” said Lauterbach.
There had been an estimated 1,700 new infections per 100,000 people in seven days, Lauterbach revealed.
The updated coronavirus vaccine is specially adapted to the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant.
Nicknamed the Kraken, the subvariant became prevalent earlier this year and caught virologists’ attention because it contains more mutations to evade immunity than other variants seen so far.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-get-covid-shots-for-christmas-minister-urges/a-67631576
Top photo: Liz and Lee in Berlin. Maskless but at least thoroughly vaccinated.
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