July 14, 2026
As of last week, Germany is no longer recommending COVID-19 shots for healthy people under age 75, including pregnant women.
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.