Germany

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s health minister said Friday that the proportion of coronavirus infections with the new omicron variant will increase sharply in the days ahead, and he appealed to people to take steps to avoid infection during Christmas festivities.

German authorities are anticipating another wave of COVID-19 cases as a result of omicron, though so far the delta variant remains dominant in the country and case numbers have drifted downward after spiking last month.

BERLIN, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The Omicron variant will become the dominant coronavirus strain in Germany within three weeks and the country has ordered 80 million doses of Omicron-specific vaccine for delivery in April or May, health officials said on Wednesday.

"An offensive booster campaign is our most important building block in the fight against Omicron," German health minister Karl Lauterbach told a news conference on Wednesday.

"The level of protection against severe COVID-19 symptoms after a booster shot is very high. I would estimate it goes well over 90%," he said.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The pipeline is built and being filled with natural gas. But Russia’s Nord Stream 2 faces a rocky road before any gas flows to Germany, with its new leaders adopting a more skeptical tone toward the project and tensions ratcheting up over Russia’s troop buildup at the Ukrainian border.

BERLIN (AP) — Franziska Giffey, a former federal minister who quit Germany’s national government earlier this year, became Berlin’s new mayor on Tuesday as the leader of a three-party left-wing governing coalition.

Giffey was elected by the state legislature nearly three months after a regional election in which she led her center-left Social Democrats, the party of new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to a narrow victory over the environmentalist Greens.

GIESSEN, Germany (AP) — She had already walked for 60 hours through the wet, dark forests of Poland, trying to make her way to Germany, when the 29-year-old Syrian Kurd twisted her knee.

It wasn’t the first setback in Bushra’s journey.

Earlier, her road companion and best friend had fainted in a panic attack as Polish border guards chased them. They hid in ditches and behind trees as her friend tried to regain her breath, but it was no good. They turned themselves in and the guards dumped them back across the border into Belarus.

BERLIN, Dec 20 (Reuters) - German leaders are considering tougher contact restrictions and an accelerated booster campaign among other measures after experts warned that the Omicron coronavirus variant could bring critical infrastructure to breaking point.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he supported the likely decision of a meeting of federal and state leaders planned for Tuesday to restrict private contacts for those who have been vaccinated, or have been infected and recovered.

WESTERSTEDE, Germany (AP) — As hospitals across Europe brace themselves for a surge in coronavirus cases over the holiday season because of the new omicron variant, Westerstede Clinical Center is cautiously hopeful it can weather the storm.

The region of northwestern Germany it mainly serves has among the lowest case numbers nationally, and an above-average vaccination rate.

“I think we’re on a stable level here,” said the head of the hospital’s intensive care unit, Rene Lehr, when The Associated Press was recently granted rare access inside the facility.

BERLIN, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The German government is looking into whether Britain should be classified as a virus variant area, said a Health Ministry spokesperson on Friday.

The government is expected to make a decision later on Friday, said the spokesperson.

Under German COVID rules, travellers returning from virus variant areas must quarantine for two weeks, even if they are vaccinated. Britain is currently experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases in part due to the more contagious Omicron coronavirus variant.

BERLIN, Dec 17 (Reuters) - German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, a former epidemiology professor famed for his bearish COVID-19 forecasts, said he expected the omicron variant of the coronavirus to unleash a "massive fifth wave" of the pandemic.

He added during a visit to the region of Lower Saxony that Germany had to prepare for a challenge "that we have never seen in this form before".

BERLIN, December 16. /TASS/: Germany's energy regulator expects no decision on Nord Stream 2 to be taken in the first half of 2022, President of the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) Jochen Homann said on Thursday.

"There will be no decisions in the first half (of 2022)," he was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Earlier, the regulator halted the process of the pipeline’s certification, Homann said, adding that it would proceed with it once it receives necessary documents from Nord Stream 2 AG.