Karl Lauterbach said this prognosis was based on realistic scenarios during a Wednesday evening panel discussion on ZDF public television.

It can be assumed that “the wave will have its peak in mid-February and that we must then expect several hundred thousand cases per day,” Lauterbach said.

There are countries whose hospitals can cope with such numbers, but in Germany the situation is different, according to the minister.

“Since we have a high number of unvaccinated elderly people in Germany, the outcome could be quite different from that in Italy, France or England, for example,” Lauterbach said.

In England, for example, the number of unvaccinated people in the over-50s group was 1-2 per cent. “These are values that we cannot come close to,” the Social Democrat and trained epidemiologist said.

Regarding Germany’s relatively low hospitalization rate in the pandemic currently, Lauterbach said that this was “irrelevant” because the wave currently under way in England and France was yet to hit Germany.

“I would expect the real burden on intensive care units to come in the middle, end of February,” Lauterbach said. “That will be the stress test, not what we are seeing now.”