Some hospitals are already overwhelmed with patients, and efforts to lift Germany’s relatively low vaccination rate beyond 70% won’t bring relief for weeks at the earliest, Lothar Wieler, the head of the RKI public-health institute, said Friday in Berlin. That’s forcing officials in coronavirus hotspots to revisit some restrictions and testing strategies deployed last winter.

“The situation is serious,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said at a news conference with Wieler, painting a grim picture of the situation heading into winter. “We have to do everything necessary to break this dynamic or it will be a bitter December for the whole country.”

Germany is facing an alarming escalation in Covid infections, with new daily cases surging past 50,000 for the first time this week and hospitals in the worst-affected states of Bavaria, Thuringia and Saxony under severe pressure…

Nearly 18 million Germans age 12 and up still haven’t been fully vaccinated, according to the health ministry. That’s one of western Europe’s worst performances, with France already at almost 78% fully inoculated, and Italy at nearly 75%, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.