Over half of Germans receive booster jab

More than 50 per cent of Germans have received a booster vaccination, as coronavirus cases in the country continue to skyrocket, with Berlin recording the highest seven-day incidence rate of more than 1,400 on Saturday, reported dpa, quoting official data.

Some 41.7 million people in the country of some 82 million have received a booster shot, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for disease control said on Saturday.

So far, some 75.4 per cent have been vaccinated with at least one shot.

Meanwhile, the country continues to grapple with a severe wave of Omicron, the more transmissible variant of the coronavirus that has already caused soaring infection numbers in other countries.

For the capital Berlin, the RKI reported a seven-day incidence rate - the number of coronavirus infections registered per 100,000 people over a week - of 1,473.1, the highest in the country. This was up from 1,258.3 the day before.

The incidence rate for Germany as a whole currently stands at 772.7.

Berlin also recorded 14,087 new infections and five deaths in 24 hours on Saturday.