Over 35,000 take to German streets to protest COVID restrictions

More than 35,000 people attended protests against Germany's coronavirus restrictions on Monday, in the latest scenes of anger at the government's pandemic response.

While many of the protests were registered with authorities beforehand, which is necessary under German law, other gatherings were unauthorized and therefore illegal.

In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, police said almost 12,000 people took part in protests in some 20 different towns and cities. The north-eastern state has been a focal point of the demonstrations in recent weeks.

In the state of Thuringia, police said more than 16,000 people had taken part in various unauthorized coronavirus protests. Protests were peaceful barring some small scuffles.

In Saxony Anhalt, some 2,500 people had gathered in the city of Magdeburg for an unregistered protest.

Protesters clashed with police in Magdeburg, with authorities saying people had broken through cordons and thrown bottles and pyrotechnics at officers. No police officers were initially reported injured.

Several thousand people took to the streets in illegal protests across the eastern state of Saxony.

Police said 14 officers were injured in attacks by protesters in the town of Lichtenstein in Saxony, and that police used pepper spray in the clashes.

"One person tried to take an officer's service weapon and another officer was bitten by a participant in the gathering," according to the police department. Charges were filed against 40 people for violent offences.

In Bavaria, around 4,200 people joined a march in Nuremberg - double the expected number - while around 2,150 attended an unregistered gathering in Bamberg, around 900 people gathered in the city of Ansbach and around 800 in the city of Bayreuth.

In many parts of the state, municipalities had banned protest events or threatened people with fines for unauthorized protest.

Baden-Württemberg, a state in south-west Germany, saw several thousand people turn out for protests, including around 2,000 in Friedrichshafen on the shores of Lake Constance in an event organized spontaneously on social media.

In the German capital Berlin, several hundred people joined a rally in front of the broadcaster ZDF's studio, with "lying press" among the slogans heard shouted in a video tweeted by a Tagesspiegel reporter. Police said there was no violence.

In Brandenburg, the rural state surrounding Berlin, critics of coronavirus restrictions and vaccination requirements turned out in various locations.

In the state capital Potsdam, several hundred people protested, police said. There was also a counter-demonstration, attended by Potsdam Mayor Mike Schubert, but authorities did not give figures on the turnout.

There were some insults hurled, but the atmosphere was mostly peaceful, according to the police.

"You don't have to walk with Reich citizens, right-wing radicals, the Dritter Weg [Third Path], the AfD or other right-wing parties to express your opinion. Your freedom of expression is protected by the state," the mayor said.

He was referring to certain banned far-right groups, as well as the opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which have been accused of capitalizing on the protest movement that has sprung up during the pandemic.

In addition to restrictions on daily life, the focus of many protesters' anger is a planned compulsory vaccination law favoured by Germany's coalition government.

The nation's vaccination rate is just over 71 per cent. Many of those who have already had two jabs are having boosters, but a significant proportion of the population - 25.8 per cent - is not vaccinated at all. This includes children aged 5 and under who are generally not yet eligible.

Unvaccinated individuals already face significant restrictions in daily life across the country, including being barred from many shops and leisure facilities.

Germany's official ethics commission has come out in favour of expanding compulsory vaccination - already in place for health workers - to the rest of the population.