Thursday January 22, 2026

COVID-19 cases rising in Germany with signs of 3rd wave

Published : 11 Mar 2021, 23:36

DF News Desk

Pedestrians wearing face masks pose for photos in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, March 3, 2021. File Photo: Xinhua.

Despite the ongoing lockdown, Germany registered 14,356 new COVID-19 infections within one day, around 2,440 more than one week ago, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) said on Thursday, reported Xinhua.

The national incidence rate of reported cases within seven days per 100,000 inhabitants rose from around 65 on the previous day to 69.1 on Thursday, according to RKI, the federal government agency for disease control and prevention.

There were "very clear signs" that the third COVID-19 wave in Germany had already begun, Lothar Wieler, president of the RKI, told the Association of Accredited Correspondents at the United Nations (ACANU) in Geneva on Wednesday.

Germany's vaccination campaign is a race against the mutating virus, but Wieler said he was hopeful that 80 percent of the country's population could be immunized against the coronavirus by this autumn. "If that is the case, all measures can be lifted," he said.

So far, the vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca have been officially approved in Germany. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended the approval of U.S. company Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine.

Around two and a half months after the start of the coronavirus vaccination program in Germany, more than 2.6 million people had received the second vaccine dose as of Wednesday, bringing the country's vaccination rate to 3.2 percent, according to the RKI.

Germans' willingness to get vaccinated strongly depends on the vaccine itself. A survey conducted by the market research institute YouGov and published on Thursday found that 61 percent of the respondents would accept the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Around 30 percent would choose the Moderna vaccine, while only 35 percent would settle for the AstraZeneca vaccine.

To date, more than 2.53 million COVID-19 infections have been officially registered in Germany since the outbreak of the pandemic. The total coronavirus-related death toll climbed to 72,810 on Thursday, according to the RKI.