Germany sees omicron dominant soon, pushes on vaccination
ABC News
A senior official says that the omicron variant could be dominant in Germany in one to three weeks
BERLIN -- The omicron variant could be dominant in Germany in one to three weeks, a senior official said Wednesday, while the health minister called for vaccination centers to be kept open over the Christmas holidays to keep the country's booster campaign up to speed.
The European Union's most populous nation has seen about 540 confirmed and 1,848 suspected cases of COVID-19 infections with omicron so far, said Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute. But he noted that those cases are one to two weeks old, because of the time need to report and sequence cases.
“The trend is crystal-clear," Wieler said. "With a doubling time (for cases) of about three days, the new variant could in the next one, two, at the latest three weeks already account for the majority of all infections in our country.”
Omicron is already the dominant form of the coronavirus in England, Scotland and the United States. In Germany, a wave of infections caused by the still-dominant delta variant is receding slowly, but officials say the case level is still much too high.
