BERLIN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, on Thursday rejected to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for adults aged 60 years or older.
A corresponding draft law was rejected with 378 votes against and 296 in favor. A general mandatory vaccination for all adults starting at age 18 was not up for vote because the proposal was not believed to win a necessary majority.
"The only bill that would have introduced compulsory vaccination has just failed," said Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach on Twitter on Thursday. "It is a very important decision, because now the fight against COVID-19 will be much harder in the fall."
The previous government under former Chancellor Angela Merkel had also rejected compulsory vaccination in Germany. Both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Lauterbach, however, have spoken out in favor of such a step.
After weekly vaccinations administered peaked at around 7.6 million at the end of 2021, figures dropped to 338,000 weekly COVID-19 shots, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases.
According to the RKI's data, around 49 million people in Germany have received at least one booster dose, while 19.5 million people are still not vaccinated. The number of unvaccinated people in Germany barely changed in recent months. ■
