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As of last week, Germany is no longer recommending COVID-19 shots for healthy people under age 75, including pregnant women. The new recommendations mark a significant departure from the country’s previous guidance, which called for annual boosters for adults 60 and over.
According to Germany’s Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO), routine COVID-19 vaccination is no longer necessary for healthy adults because most people have developed hybrid immunity — through vaccination, infection or both — and severe COVID-19 infections are now uncommon outside high-risk groups.
COVID-19 shots are still recommended for adults 75 and over, high-risk individuals, residents of long-term care facilities, some healthcare workers and individuals who care for people at high risk of infection, and pregnant women who have significant medical risk factors or pregnancy complications.
The new guidance is “an acknowledgment, indirectly, that further vaccinations are not useful,” because natural immunity is effective at protecting the population against infection, said Harald Walach, Ph.D., founder and director of the Change Health Science Institute in Germany and professorial research fellow at Kazimieras Simonavicius University in Lithuania.
“Better late than not at all,” Walach said.
German toxicologist Helmut Sterz, previously a researcher for major pharmaceutical companies, called the new guidance a “political charade” by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the parent organization of STIKO.
Sterz said the “government-dependent RKI” adopted the new recommendations because it “can no longer go on with telling the population lies” about the safety or necessity of the COVID-19 shots.
The changes come amid a decline in COVID-19 vaccine uptake in several European countries. The decline led Pfizer to sue Poland and Romania and freeze some of their funds after those governments canceled their contracts for COVID-19 vaccine doses, citing low demand.
Experts say new recommendations don’t go far enough
Several significant developments led STIKO to change its COVID-19 vaccination recommendations, the German newspaper Die Zeit reported.
The rise in hybrid immunity in the population, the declining severity of COVID-19 infections, the continued decrease in deaths and hospitalizations from COVID-19 and the changing nature of SARS-CoV-2 — which now has the characteristics of a seasonal respiratory virus — factored into STIKO’s decision.
STIKO cited the fact that “over 95% of the adult population has broad immunity from past infections or vaccines” as evidence that healthy adults 75 and younger are well-protected against severe COVID-19 infections.
Sterz said that while the new policy vindicates proponents of natural immunity, the effectiveness of this strategy in conferring immunity should not be conflated with the protection purportedly provided by the COVID-19 shots.
“People who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 have never developed a durable, solid immunity against this man-made virus,” Sterz said.
STIKO’s report cited data showing a significant reduction in deaths between the 2023-24 and 2025-26 cold and flu seasons. Hospitalizations declined from approximately 135,000 to 50,000. Deaths dropped from approximately 4,300 to fewer than 900 during the same period.
According to STIKO, of the remaining cases, most occurred in older adults, with approximately 80% of hospitalizations and 97% of deaths occurring among people age 60 or over. The burden was highest among people 80 years old and up.
The new recommendations are “a step in the right direction,” said internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker. But he suggested that even the population groups identified as being at risk don’t need annual boosters.
He said that continuing to recommend the shots for people 75 and older “perpetuates the false notion that seasonal respiratory viruses require annual ‘boosters,’ a falsehood that is borne out by the abysmal record of the annual influenza vaccine.”
Sterz suggested that declining hospitalizations and deaths, officially attributed to the declining severity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and widespread hybrid immunity, are actually due to the decreased uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Perhaps it’s because people became more and more reluctant to get the jab,” Sterz said.
According to RKI data cited by Eurosurveillance, only 20.9% of people ages 60 or over in Germany received a COVID-19 vaccine during the 2024-25 cold and flu season, despite the country’s official guidance.
These data contrast with RKI figures showing that 85.3% of adults 60 and over had received the first booster dose and 39% received a second booster dose.
Sterz suggested that German public health authorities have long overstated the severity and risk of COVID-19. “I would say that this was the case from the very beginning. The pandemic was mainly created by (false-positive) PCR test results,” Sterz said.
A peer-reviewed study co-authored by Walach and published last year in Frontiers in Epidemiology found that only about 1 in 7 positive PCR tests in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic indicated an actual coronavirus infection that triggered an antibody response.
Like Baker, Sterz suggested that the “at-risk” groups for which STIKO continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination should opt not to get vaccinated. Sterz highlighted the potential risks of mRNA vaccines.
“The immune system of these people must be boosted by natural ways and not weakened by a non-efficient and dangerous vaccine,” Sterz said.
German report sidesteps COVID vaccine adverse events
According to STIKO’s report, severe COVID-19 cases during pregnancy are now rare and healthy pregnant women now face a risk that’s comparable to that of healthy women of the same age group.
STIKO continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination, however, for pregnant women with diabetes, hypertension, immune deficiency, significant chronic disease or pregnancy-related complications.
Sterz suggested the new policy should have been recommended from the beginning of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
“Why was this not the strategy from the very beginning? Vaccination of pregnant women with an unknown, not properly evaluated vaccine was a criminal medical act,” Sterz said.
Sterz cited the “Pfizer documents,” released in 2024 and analyzed by independent researchers. The documents cited vaccine-related deaths, serious adverse events among pregnant women and irreversible harm to reproductive health in the clinical trial data of the original Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot.
STIKO’s report does not address adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination — for pregnant women or any other population group. This despite continuing questions about the safety of the mRNA vaccine technology, which some scientists have said puts people at risk, and calls for their suspension.
Walach suggested that safety concerns likely underlie STIKO’s new guidance, even if those concerns are not spelled out in its report.
“I think it is becoming more and more obvious that the mRNA shots are problematic. Without specifically acknowledging this, this perception likely underlies this recommendation,” Walach said. “There have been multiple calls for the STIKO to change their policy. It seems they have caved in,” Walach said.
An October 2024 survey conducted in Germany found that 1 in 6 respondents reported experiencing side effects after receiving a COVID-19 shot.
Internal RKI documents released by an anonymous whistleblower in July 2024 showed that the organization overlooked COVID-19 vaccine safety concerns, seeking to skip Phase 3 trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and to release the product “straight into broad application.”
The documents also showed that widespread vaccination of children and other pandemic-era policies weren’t based on rational or scientific considerations but on political factors.
Walach said STIKO’s guidance does not go far enough and that it should instead “express a wholesale recommendation to not use mRNA for any vaccine.”
Last month, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) committee unanimously voted to recommend approval of Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine for the 50-64 and 65-plus age groups. Full FDA approval is pending.
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U.S., UK among countries that have relaxed COVID vaccine recommendations
Germany’s new recommendations come as other countries have also relaxed their COVID-19 vaccine guidance.
In December 2025, the U.K.’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation issued new guidance to offer COVID-19 vaccines only to adults aged 75 and over, residents of care homes, and people ages 6 months and older who are immunosuppressed.
Those changes followed the CDC’s adoption of new COVID-19 vaccine guidance in October 2025, based on recommendations issued by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in September of that year, when the committee voted to recommend “individual-based decision-making” for COVID-19 vaccination for people ages 6 months to 64 years.
In justifying its vote, ACIP emphasized that the risk-benefit of vaccination is most favorable for those at increased risk for severe COVID-19 infections.
In May 2025, the CDC stopped recommending the COVID-19 shot for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. The change prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups to sue U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Related articles in The Defender
- ‘Stunning’: Only 1 in 7 Germans With Positive PCR Test Had COVID Infection
- Germany’s Top Court Rules Doctors Not Liable for COVID Vaccine Injuries
- Even When It Came to Children, German Government Ignored Own Scientists to Impose Strict COVID Vaccine, Mask Mandates
- 1 in 6 Germans Experienced COVID Vaccine Side Effects, Survey Finds
- ‘Informed Consent Is Back’: New COVID Vaccine Recommendations Give Families More Say
- Breaking: Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine Gets Unanimous Thumbs-Up Despite Risks, Low Efficacy
