Germany registers 9,549 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours

BERLIN, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Daily COVID-19 infections in Germany continued to rise as 9,549 new cases were registered within one day, around 2,000 more than one week ago, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced on Tuesday.

The incidence rate of reported COVID-19 cases in Germany in the past seven days per 100,000 citizens also increased slightly compared to the previous day to 135.2 on Tuesday, according to the federal government agency for disease control and prevention RKI.

According to the Ministry of Health, doctors' practices are scheduled to begin vaccination in the week after the Easter holidays in order to "achieve the fastest possible nationwide vaccination coverage of the population to protect against COVID-19 disease."

More than three months after the start of the coronavirus vaccination program in Germany, around 3.96 million people were fully vaccinated as of Monday, bringing the country's vaccination rate to 4.8 percent, according to the RKI.

The German newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine reported on Tuesday that the country's Standing Committee on Vaccination would now only recommend COVID-19 vaccinations with AstraZeneca for women and men over 60 years of age.

As in some other European countries, the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine had already been suspended temporarily in March because several cases of thrombosis in the cerebral veins were reported in temporal connection with the vaccination.

To date, more than 2.79 million COVID-19 infections have been officially registered in Germany since the outbreak of the pandemic. The death toll climbed to 76,093 on Tuesday, according to the RKI.