Premier of most populous German state against compulsory COVID-19 vaccination

Premier of Germany’s most populous state has spoken out against compulsory vaccination, as the country experiences a surge in coronavirus infections.
Hendrik Wuest, Premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, spoke with the radio station WDR5 on Thursday.
Wuest said that every day, several thousand people were still being vaccinated for the first time.
He said that this showed arguments in favour of vaccination still worked.
Wuest said that he didn’t believe that every person who had not yet been vaccinated was a “massive vaccination refuser”.
According to him, he does not want to scare the group away, by slamming a vaccination obligation in their face.
“Are we going to use the police to force people to get vaccinated?” Wuest asked.
The Premier, who is from the centre-right CDU, was also skeptical about compulsory vaccination for certain professional groups such as nursing staff.
He said nurses were “worth their weight in gold,” referring to the national shortage of skilled workers in the sector.
Wuest suggested that health professionals who did not want to be vaccinated could perhaps be employed elsewhere.
“If we drive people out by making vaccination compulsory, I don’t know if we are really serving the cause,” he said.
Germany registered over 50,000 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours on Thursday, over 10,000 more than the previous day.