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Our Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly, reports on why Germany is behind its neighbours in relaxing pandemic restrictions.

Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, has dismissed calls for a speedier relaxation of restrictions to control Covid, warning that the country was in a more vulnerable situation to comparable countries such as Denmark or the UK owing to the relatively high number of unvaccinated people in the over 60 age bracket.

Speaking at a weekly press briefing in Berlin, Lauterbach said that about 12% of Germany’s over 60s remained unvaccinated, which he said was around three to four times higher than in other comparable countries.

Currently 75% of Germans have had two jabs, and 56% have received booster shots. The UK’s figures are 73% and 56% respectively. Denmark’s are 81% and 62%.

The German media in particular has looked with envy to Denmark and the UK in recent weeks as they have dropped most major restrictions, asking when Lauterbach would also declare “freedom day” in Germany.

But Lauterbach said: “There can be no such thing as ‘freedom day’.” He said that lateral flow tests and PCR tests would remain free, and that to do away with them would be the equivalent of “flying blind”.

A relaxation of protection measures starting with the immediate abolition of the need for people to show their vaccine or recovered status when entering non-essential shops, must be carried out in a “precise fashion” he warned, so as not to cause another wave.

Germany’s Omicron wave passed its peak earlier this week. Lars Schade, vice president of the disease control agency Robert Koch Institute, warned that despite a general decrease in the incidence rate, the number of older people getting infected, especially in care homes, was currently rising, and deaths remained high, with 264 new deaths announced on Thursday.

Schade added that a close eye was being kept on the advance of the Omicron sub-type BA.2, which is thought to be more infectious and to cause more severe symptoms.

Michael Meyer-Hermann, a professor of immunology who is a member of the government’s council of experts, said there was finally “light at the end of the tunnel”. He said Germany had, compared with neighbouring countries, so far emerged with a comparably lower death rate, even though he said 1,400 deaths per million of the population, compared with the average in Europe of 2,200, was still “far too high”.

He warned people who got infected with Omicron against believing this would offer them protection against the virus similar to that given by the vaccine.

“People who have recovered from an Omicron infection but are not vaccinated will have a lower protection against other variants,” he said.

Lauterbach said he believed Covid would remain a major public health issue for at least a decade. Which was why it was important he said to create a “basic immunity” against it as soon as possible.