Germany needs to impose tough Covid restrictions 'immediately' or 'risk seeing ...

Germany needs to impose tough Covid restrictions 'immediately' or risk seeing 100,000 new deaths, a top Berlin virologist has said.  

The warning from Christian Drosten, head of virology at Berlin's Charite University Hospital, came as the country saw yet another record day of coronavirus cases.

Speaking on his NDR podcast, Drosten said that 100,000 deaths was a 'conservative estimate' as cases continue to rise, adding that another lockdown would be needed if vaccinations do not quickly accelerate. 

'We have a real emergency situation now,' he said of the situation at many hospital intensive care units across the country. 'We need to do something immediately.' 

Since the start of the pandemic, 96,963 people have died with Covid-19 in Germany, according to official figures. 

Mr Drosten, one of the county's top virologists, said he expects 'a very strenuous winter' if vaccinations do not pick up quickly, and said the German government would need to consider measures 'that we actually hoped to have behind us'.

'We probably need to control infection activity again through contact measures - not probably, but certainly,' he said.

'We're in a bad situation, we have 15 million people who could have been vaccinated and should have been vaccinated,' Mr Drosten said.

The scientist's dire warning came as Germany's national disease control centre reported a record number of new coronavirus cases on Wednesday.

The 39,676 cases registered by the Robert Koch Institute surpassed the previous daily record of 37,120 new cases reported Friday.

The institute said Germany's infection rate rose to 232.1 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days.

However, government officials have repeatedly said they do not intend to impose lockdowns and have instead appealed to people to get vaccinated.