German health minister advocates tougher curbs on contacts

Germany’s health minister is advocating tougher curbs on contact between people as the country prepares for a new rise in coronavirus infections fueled by the omicron variant

BERLIN -- Germany's health minister is advocating tougher curbs on contact between people as the country prepares for a new rise in coronavirus infections fueled by the omicron variant.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the country's 16 state governors are set to confer Friday on charting a way forward. They're likely to build on restrictions introduced just after Christmas that limited private gatherings to 10 people, among other things.

“Tightening will unfortunately be necessary to face the serious wave that is coming our way,” Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group in comments published Wednesday. He said he would make proposals, but didn't elaborate.

Lauterbach also renewed an appeal for vaccine holdouts to reconsider. He said people who remain unvaccinated in Germany can't expect contact restrictions for them to be lifted “in the short- or medium-term.”