Some social media users are sharing claims that a weekly report by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) showed that 95.58% of Omicron cases in Germany are among the fully vaccinated. The claims are partly based on a mistake in an RKI report that has since been corrected.
Examples can be seen here and here .
The text in one post reads: “JUST IN - Robert Koch Institute report released today states that 95.58% of the #Omicron cases in Germany are fully vaccinated (28% of those had a “booster”), 4.42% are unvaccinated.”
Comments on the posts include: “So much talk about getting the JAB. It doesn’t work,” “who’s surprised!” and: “And yet our ridiculous government wants people to get vaxxed and boosted to keep us safe. Idiots.”
The RKI is a German government agency that conducts research and prevention of infectious diseases, as explained here .
Ronja Wenchel, an RKI spokesperson, told Reuters via email: “RKI did not report such a number, only a synopsis about the number of Omicron cases vaccinated and unvaccinated so far.”
“The number of 186 unvaccinated patients in the report from 30.12.2021 was wrong, the correct number is 1,097,” Wenchel said.
The report, visible here , has since been updated to show the correct number.
Wenchel also pointed out other considerations. There are fewer Omicron variant cases in Germany compared to the Delta variant Delta (6.257 vs 29.494 in calendar week 51), these are concentrated around urban areas and distribution of Omicron cases varies widely between federal states, for example with 65% in Bremen and 1% in Sachsen.
“The variability has different reasons like a low number of Omicron cases, different number of conducted tests and slower transmission of test results due to the holidays,” Wenchel added.
“All in all it is not legitimate to extrapolate the value to the general population or to estimate vaccine effectiveness with such data,” Wenchel said. “The RKI did not estimate the vaccine effectiveness concerning Omicron so far.”
VERDICT
Missing context. The weekly report by RKI on COVID-19 cases included an error in the number of unvaccinated individuals.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.