Karl Lauterbach

A ceremony with an "all together" theme has taken place in Cologne in order to remember the racist incident occurred on the Keup Avenue, commonly known as a Turkish avenue, 20 years ago.

The COVID-19 pandemic is over in Germany, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said, as quoted by Politico.

Lauterbach, who is an epidemiologist, said at a news conference that he made that estimate based on looking at virus variants, vaccination rates and hospital cases.

"We successfully overcame the pandemic in Germany," added the Social Democrat.

Universal compulsory vaccination against coronavirus in Germany could become one of the tools in the fight against the pandemic. This was stated by the new German Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach in an interview with the weekly Der Spiegel, published on Saturday.

Negotiators for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) reconvened on Monday to hammer out compromises on healthcare and labor policy, the stumbling blocks in the way of another "grand coalition."