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The increasing occupation of intensive care beds in a population that has a vaccination rate below 70% is leading the authorities to take new coercive measures. The mandatory vaccination, as in neighboring Austria, is no longer a taboo.
With Sergio Correa, RFI correspondent in Berlin
The number of cases has been increasing rapidly for weeks in Germany, which with only 68% of the population vaccinated has one of the lowest rates in Europe. The figure is similar to that of neighboring Austria, which since Monday has resolved to confine its population again and demanded that the vaccine be mandatory.
One of the decisive numbers, the beds available in intensive care units, is becoming worrying: only 3,500 beds remain available out of 25,000 in the whole of Germany.
In this context, a taboo subject until now, such as making vaccination compulsory, is beginning to gain support among political parties but considerably less in the population: only 57% of Germans agree with making it compulsory.
The current restrictions “are no longer sufficient,” warned Chancellor Angela Merkel, only four days after having decided with her possible successor Olaf Scholz on severe coercive measures against the unvaccinated.
From tomorrow, tougher measures will begin to be applied in the country, shows will probably be prohibited and there will be access to bars and restaurants and even public transport only to vaccinated and recovered. States like Saxony, with very high rates of contagion, are under threat of a new confinement.
Scientists believe that only by reaching a rate of 90% of vaccinated will it be possible to control the pandemic, but the resistance of the population is great, surely favored by the difference between the rigidity of the measures and the confusing and even contradictory of the information on how the pandemic acts.
United States Warning
Against this background, the United States Department of State urged its citizens on Monday not to travel to Germany, as well as Denmark, due to the increase in cases of covid-19 in Europe.
The US government’s warning is level 4, the highest grade, and it advises against traveling to both European countries due to “a very high level of covid.”
Europe’s return to the epicenter of the pandemic has been attributed to the low vaccination rate in some countries, the highly contagious Delta variant, and colder weather that brings people back to life indoors.
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