German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called on the public to reduce social contact as the country grapples with its fourth wave of Covid-19 infections, while authorities announced four additional suspected cases of the new Omicron variant on Monday.
"It is important that we all act together now," Steinmeier wrote in an editorial for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "Let's stick to the rules, let's reduce our contacts once again. Let's do it so that schools and childcare centres don't close again, so that we don't have to completely shut down public life again."
His comments came a day after the German health authorities announced a record number of Covid-19 cases, including four suspected cases of Omicron on top of the three already confirmed on Sunday.
Hospital wards in some states are at capacity, with patients in some cases having to be redistributed around the country. Since Friday, an overall 50 seriously ill Covid-19 patients have been moved to states with spare intensive care beds, according to a government official.
Meanwhile, hospitals are increasingly postponing elective surgery to deal with Covid-19 cases. Regular, scheduled operations are no longer possible in more than three quarters of the country's hospitals, according to the German Hospital Association.
Acting Research Minister Anja Karliczek called on lawmakers to impose regulations requiring people to restrict their contacts, including the fully vaccinated, in line with recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
"Politics should follow the advice of science without hesitation. We must not lose any more time," Karliczek told dpa.
Leopoldina called on Saturday for the swift imposition of contact bans for several weeks, irrespective of vaccination status, in order to counter the fourth wave.
The institute also called for compulsory vaccination, at least for health workers.
The president of the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), Peter Adrian, said he "really sincerely hopes" the German economy can be spared another lockdown.
"Companies in a wide variety of sectors have been so battered by the prior events that I think it would no longer be reasonable," he told Bayerischer Rundfunk on Monday.
The debate around efforts to curb the fourth wave of cases has gained greater urgency with the arrival of Omicron, a new and potentially more transmissible strain of Covid-19.
Germany already had three confirmed cases of the Omicron variant on Monday afternoon, with one further suspected case in Lower Saxony and three further suspected cases in Hessen awaiting genome sequencing.
The European Centre for Disease Control has said the strain could significantly reduce the effectiveness of the available vaccines and increase the risk of reinfection.
A new coronavirus crisis team planned by Germany's incoming coalition partners should start work "as soon as possible," according to the outgoing federal government.
Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz are in close contact on the issue, government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said on Monday in Berlin.
In their coalition agreement the centre-left Social Democrats, the business-friendly Free Democrats and the Greens have committed to setting up a permanent federal-state crisis committee.
