Germany’s Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach, announced on Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic is over in Germany, citing virus variants, vaccination rates, and hospital cases as evidence for his assessment, according to a Politico report.
Lauterbach, an epidemiologist and Social Democrat, had initially taken a cautious approach to the pandemic and had significant sway over the government’s policies during the global health scare.
“We have successfully overcome the pandemic in Germany and also with a good balance sheet,” he stated at a press conference.
While acknowledging the interest in questioning what went wrong during the crisis, Lauterbach argued that Germany’s strategy as a whole had worked out because “the reasonable ones and those who have been helpful in Germany have mastered the challenges,” Politico notes.
Nonetheless, Lauterbach conceded that certain things could have been done differently in retrospect. “I believe that the long school closures were not so necessary,” he said.
