Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, has warned that his country is going through a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated. “The pandemic is far from over,” said Spahn, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “We are currently experiencing a pandemic of the unvaccinated, which is massive. There would be fewer coronavirus patients on intensive care units if more people would let themselves be vaccinated.” In the last week several German clinics have raised alarm about rising numbers of patients with Covid-19 on the wards. On Wednesday authorities reported 2,220 patients in intensive care beds, the highest number since the start of June. Over the last seven days 666 people have died from the virus in Germany, slightly more than in the same week a year ago, before the start of the vaccination drive and the arrival of the more infectious Delta variant. For now the number of fatalities is rising less steeply than it did during the previous three coronavirus waves in the country. The head of Germany’s disease control agency, Lothar Wieler, described the recent rise in infection rates as frightening. “The fourth wave is developing in exactly the way we feared, because not enough people have received the vaccine,” said Wieler, who is president of the Robert Koch Institute. The percentage of the German population fully vaccinated against Covid-19 has in effect flatlined for the last month at 66%, a lower rate than in other western European states such as France, Italy, Spain and the UK. Surveys suggest those who have refused a jab so far are unlikely to change their mind. A number of high-profile people such as the Bayern Munich footballer Joshua Kimmich and the former Die Linke chairperson Sahra Wagenknecht have recently made public that they have declined to be vaccinated. Unlike many of its southern European neighbours, Germany has not made vaccination mandatory for some professional sectors, such as care for elderly people, and on Wednesday Spahn reiterated that there were no plans to do so in the future. Instead, the health minister pointed to recent numbers from Israel as evidence that governments could get on top of a fourth wave of the pandemic by quickly administering booster shoots to those who had received their vaccinations more than six months ago. “A booster shot can make a real difference,” he said. However, Israel has a much higher percentage of the population already vaccinated, estimated at above 80%. In Germany’s federalised system, health authorities in each of the 16 states are responsible for setting up infrastructure that would allow vaccines to be administered en masse. Many of the vaccine centres set up at the start of the year have been in standby mode since September and would need to hire or train new staff to be reactivated. Leif Erik Sander, a physician at the department of infectious diseases and respiratory medicine at Berlin’s Charité hospital, said on Wednesday that about 30 million people in Germany were already or would soon be in need of a booster shot, but vaccinations were only happening at a rate of about 150,000 people a day. “It’s fairly easy to calculate that at this rate we wouldn’t be able to immunise these groups in time for this winter,” Sander said.