Germany sees omicron dominant soon, pushes on vaccination

BERLIN (AP) — A senior official says that the omicron variant could be dominant in Germany in one to three weeks. Meanwhile, the health minister called Wednesday for vaccination centers to be kept open over the Christmas holidays to keep the country’s booster campaign up to speed. The head of the national disease control center said the European Union’s most populous nation has seen about 540 confirmed and 1,848 suspected cases of COVID-19 infections with omicron so far. But he noted that those cases are one to two weeks old, because of the time needed to report and sequence cases. Omicron is already the dominant form of the coronavirus in England, Scotland and the United States.