Germany will not see lockdown over Christmas

Germany will not go into lockdown ahead of Christmas even though the Omicron variant poses a major challenge for the country, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Sunday.

"No, we won't have a lockdown like in the Netherlands before Christmas," he told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.

"But in fact it's like this: We will get a fifth wave," said Lauterbach. "We have exceeded a critical number of Omicron-infected people. So this wave can no longer be stopped completely, and we have to counter it."

In the Netherlands, a tough lockdown came into force on Sunday in response to the rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus. Almost all shops, restaurants, cultural and sports facilities, schools and hairdressers are closed. Supermarkets and pharmacies are excluded.

"We need a common strategy against Omicron," Hendrik Wüst, the premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, told dpa, referring to the fact that Germany's 16 states sometimes take different approaches to pandemic rules and restrictions.

At the moment, almost all states are currently implementing a rule that prohibits people who have not been vaccinated or recovered from the virus from entering non-essential shops. Medical grade masks are mandatory across broad swathes of public life.

Yet as the Christmas and New Year's holidays approach, the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant across Europe is putting the new left-leaning government in Berlin under pressure, but re-imposing an unpopular hard lockdown has seemed unlikely.

The nationwide seven-day incidence has been falling. On Sunday morning, the Robert Koch Institute for disease control said cases per 100,000 residents in the last seven days stood at 315.4 - the day before it was 321.8.

However, due to the more contagious Omicron variant, experts fear an imminent trend reversal.

The German Hospital Society, for instance, is warning that the situation in emergency care facilities will likely worsen.

The government's panel of coronavirus experts expects "enormous challenges" in the coming weeks and months because of the variant.

In a statement published on Sunday, it said: "The Omicron wave is hitting a population exhausted by an almost two-year pandemic and the fight against it - with heavy tensions evident on a daily basis."

A comprehensive communication strategy with clear explanations of the new risk situation and the resulting measures is essential, the panel said. In this highly dynamic situation, the omicron wave can only be managed through determined and sustained political action, it said.

Even with Omicron dominating headlines, nearly 20 per cent of Germans polled say they have plans to travel over Christmas.

In a survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of dpa, 13 per cent said they wanted to travel to celebrate Christmas with friends or relatives.

Six per cent of the 2,074 people surveyed are planning a vacation trip.

But 79 per cent said they want to stay at home over the holidays, while 2 per cent did not provide any information.