Senior doctor Thomas Marx puts on his personal protective gear before entering the room of a patient with the novel coronaviruses in an intensive care unit at the hospital in southern Germany.
Germany is set to decide on tougher Covid-19 restrictions and could even opt for a full lock down as it faces record daily infections and mounting pressure on hospitals.
Jens Spahn, the country's health minister, warned Germans this week that by the end of winter, most of them will be dead. The heads of Germany's 16 federal states have been told to decide on stricter rules by Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Spahn said that more public spaces should be restricted to those that have had a negative test, or those that have been recently recovered. 3G rules apply to Germans going into the workplace or public transport.
Many states in Germany have already restricted access to public spaces like bars, restaurants, movie theaters and museums under the 2G rules, which restricts access to only those who are vaccine-free or recovered. Several major German Christmas markets have adopted 2G rules.
The opening of the Christmas market in Cologne, Germany on Nov 22, 2021, is marked by a 2G sign, as cases of coronaviruses are at a high peak in Germany.
The government and federal states agreed last week to further nationwide restrictions that would come into force based on the hospitalization rate in the respective federal state.
Spahn told Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio that hospitals in Germany are having to move patients around as intensive care units are full and that doesn't just affect Covid-19 patients.
The incidence rate for Covid infections in Germany jumped to 400 on Wednesday, the first time in over a year, as the number of daily infections hit a new record. Over 100,000 people have died from the virus in Germany.
German officials are said to be considering compulsory vaccinations, having already urged those not yet vaccined to take up a shot. The country has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe.
Germany has been trying to boost Covid vaccinations and the deployment of booster shots as winter approaches. The vaccine hesitancy and the spread of the highly infectious delta Covid variant make the task much harder.
The idea of compulsory vaccinations has been a controversial idea in Europe, but the dramatic Covid landscape has made the debate an increasingly prevalent one, and some officials believe mandating vaccines is the only way to stop the virus.
Covid vaccines greatly reduce the risk of severe infections, hospitalization and death from the virus, but they are not 100% effective at reducing transmission.
There are ethical questions to consider when it comes to vaccine mandates, but some countries have overlooked them in favor of the overall benefit that vaccination confers.
Are Covid vaccine mandates ethical? Medical experts have their say.
Austria will make Covid vaccines compulsory from Feb. 1 next year, and a number of other countries have made Covid vaccines mandatory for frontline health workers. The U.K. will follow in the spring of 2022.
The federal government is considering mandatory vaccinations for medical workers and health care staff, which was previously ruled out.
The current level of concern in Germany at the Covid crisis shows that some lawmakers are now calling for compulsory vaccinations.
The head of the youth wing of the Christian Democratic Union wrote in Die Welt newspaper on Sunday that we need to clearly say that we need de facto compulsory vaccinations for everyone.
The unvaccinated were bringing Germany to the brink of desperation, and it cannot be that the entire population is locked away every winter.
The political negotiations to form a new coalition government are going on despite the Covid crisis. The negotiations between the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party are expected to conclude any time now and a coalition deal is expected to be announced Wednesday.
