On Thursday in the Bundestag, even a watered-down measure for compulsory vaccination for the over-60s failed to garner enough support.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday evening that there was clearly no majority in parliament for a vaccine mandate, and that this fact “had to form the basis for our approach to this issue.”

Although Lauterbach had said shortly after the vote that he would still strive to introduce a mandate, describing it as a matter of life and death for many people, on Friday morning he admitted that the chances were slim.

He shared “the view of Olaf Scholz that the chance of reaching some kind of result through talks is very limited,” he told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.

The Bundestag vote revealed that a large majority of Free Democrats – the smallest partner in Scholz’s three-way coalition – opposed a vaccine mandate, and that there was no consensus in the body as a whole.

Meanwhile, the national disease institute RKI has revealed in its weekly report that it thought the latest wave of coronavirus infections had now passed its peak.

The seven-day rate of infection is on a downward trend. But the numbers of daily deaths still remains high in Germany, regularly above 300.