We need to flatten COVID-19 third wave - German health official

Germany's top public health official said on Friday that it would not be possible to halt a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic that is causing a worrying increase in patients landing in hospital intensive care units.

"We cannot prevent this third wave but my hope is that we can flatten it - we can only do this together," Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases, told a news conference.

Wieler said he expected hospitals to be massively burdened with incoming patients infected with the the now-dominant variant of the COVID-19 virus first discovered in Britain that is more infectious and deadly than earlier strains.