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BERLIN, Dec 22 (Reuters) – German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Wednesday that a fourth vaccination will be necessary in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic due to the more contagious Omicron variant. He said that Germany has ordered 80 million doses of a vaccine made by Biontech specifically targeting Omicron and should arrive in April or May. Germany has also ordered four million doses of the newly approved vaccine Novavax – seen as more acceptable to vaccine sceptics – and 11 million doses of the new Valneva shot, which is waiting for marketing authorisation, Lauterbach said. The Novavax shots will arrive in the country in January, Lauterbach told a news conference. “An offensive booster campaign is our most important building block in the fight against Omicron,” the health minister said. Lauterbach threw his support behind a general vaccine mandate, saying that without one, it would not be possible to manage coming waves of infection over the long term. According to Lothar Wieler, president of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases, Omicron will be responsible for most coronavirus infections in Germany within three weeks. “Christmas should not become the spark that starts the Omicron blaze,” RKI chief Lothar Wieler told the same news conference, adding people should limit contacts to an absolute minimum. (Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska and Miranda Murray Editing by Madeline Chambers.NN: I find it interesting 70% of the US eligible population has not gotten vaccinated at all or they have not gotten their 3rd shot. Meanwhile i am preparing to get my 4th. What is the problem here? I got my first  two shots In January. My booster 6 months later in June. My 3rd booster in the beginning of September. And i expect to get my 4th in January. So we are on a 4 to 6 month schedule.  The science shows a 4 to 6 month booster program. I can do this and you should to.

OSLO/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Wind speeds were milder than usual in Europe this year, so windmills across the bloc generated less electricity which worsened a crunch that sent power prices to record highs as utilities had to buy more coal and scarce, costly, natural gas. The situation illustrated a challenge facing the European Union as it tries to boost renewable power and meet its climate targets: Power prices can soar when the wind dies down, so generators need ways to store some of the excess power when winds are strong.

“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” said Rory McCarthy, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

Less wind power increased demand at thermal power plants, but tight natural gas supplies raised their costs. The worldwide spike in gas prices drove up energy bills for businesses and consumers. Some heavy industry had to cut supplies and some power suppliers went out of business.Europe’s largest wind producers Britain, Germany and Denmark harnessed just 14% of installed capacity, in the third quarter, when gas prices hit record highs, compared with an average of 20-26% seen in previous years, according to Refinitiv data.  In Germany, Europe’s largest economy with the continent’s highest wind power capacity, combined output from both on and offshore wind farms fell around 16% this year-to-date, Bruno Burger, an analyst at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, told Reuters. (Graphic: Full Load Hours German Wind Turbines,  Wind power generation has low operating costs, offering cheaper wholesale power than thermal plants that must pay for fuel, along with costs associated with carbon emissions. This makes wholesale electricity prices lower at times of high wind, leading to lower consumer bills. Weaker wind periods, which are not uncommon, cause prices to rise and more thermal plants are needed. Anna Borg, chief executive of Swedish utility Vattenfall sees two lessons. First, “the market will be more volatile going forward and that the market needs to adapt to that,” she told Reuters. Also, “there is an evident need and also a value in flexibility services and storage. … I think we are only at the beginning of the development of that kind of business model.” Utilities across Europe are starting to invest in storage systems including large batteries or smart charging solutions for electric cars. Several countries are also seeking to reward flexible consumer behaviour such as industrial customers curbing demand at certain hours. Better matching supply and demand can help maintain grid stability. Europe currently invests 40 billion euros a year on power grids, according to lobby group WindEurope which estimates that annual investments need to double over the next thirty years to 66-80 billion euros a year. Both the European Commission and International Energy Agency (IEA) said recent record energy prices should not slow the effort to meet climate targets under the Paris agreement by moving away from fossil fuels. Instead, governments should help boost capacity of wind and other renewable power sources, ensuring more overall output and avoiding the need for reliance on fossil fuels as backup. “The more renewable energy we can build, the more electricity will come from those sources and the less coal and gas is needed for electricity production,” Christian Rynning-Toennesen, head of Norwegian utility Statkraft, told Reuters. “So we think the trend (for renewable energy growth) will continue and be strengthened by these electricity prices, rather than slowed down,” he said.

But some believe the energy transition may already be getting ahead of itself. Sindre Knutsson, vice president markets at consultancy Rystad Energy told Reuters Europe is turning away from fossil fuels too quickly.

Knutsson noted that more coal-fired plants capable of stable power generation are being decommissioned together with nuclear. “It’s no secret that we will use renewables to generate electricity in the future. But at the moment, we’re still relying on fossil fuels,” he said. Low or zero-emissions back-up capacity for periods of low wind or solar supply such as batteries, hydrogen or carbon capture and storage are still more than a decade away from being available at scale, agreed Matthew Jones, lead analyst for EU Power at ICIS. “So for the moment thermal capacity is required,” he told Reuters. Earnings at several European wind power generators were hit by this year’s wind lulls, but the companies remain committed to increasing capacity. The world’s biggest developer of offshore wind farms, Orsted said the lower wind speeds had a negative 2.5 billion crowns ($379.20 million) impact for the first nine months of the year compared to 2020. Germany’s RWE said weaker winds caused profits at its wind and solar units to fall by 38% in the first nine months of the year. There was nothing to suggest that climate change itself played a role in the lower wind speeds, companies in the sector said. “We follow it on a daily basis, but we see nothing which indicate that there is a long-term change coming,” Orsted’s head of Continental Europe, Rasmus Errboe, told Reuters. Statkraft also regularly measures wind speeds and conditions but had not seen any extraordinary adjustments to its data, according to its CEO. “To my knowledge, there’s not any pattern that we can see,” Rynning-Toennesen said. More renewables will make prices more volatile in the short to mid term, as weather will largely dictate prices, the heads of two power trading firms agreed. “It will become common for the electricity market in Europe to have a very high degree of volatility because that will just be the nature of the assets that we are bringing online and the nature of the assets that we are taking offline,” said chief executive at trading firm InCommodities, Jesper Johanson. Power traders, who typically profit from gyrating conditions, say the market can handle the higher volatility, and price spikes provide investors with an incentive to fund back-up solutions. “In order to get commercial investments going into different kind of storage, like batteries, the market needs to give that price signal. There needs to be volatility and the stronger that price signal is, the more investments we will see,” Johanson added. (Graphic: Next-Day Power Prices.  High prices should favour construction of more renewable energy, agreed Anders Bauditz, chief executive of trading firm Norlys Energy Trading. “Hopefully, the politicians have seen these price extremes over the last few months and will do the tally and then realize that probably we need to push for even more green energy and then figure out how we solve the problem with the intermittency,” he told Reuters. NN: We have had extreme climate change on earth long before a few million humans discovered fire. Yes their is climate change. Their always has been. I am not so sure its driven by human activities. But lets not quibble. It benefits man kind to stop burning wood and coal and heavy oil from a pollution stand point. I would not be to quick to abandoned nuclear and nature gas while we wait for the technology to develop

he Omicron coronavirus variant seems to be causing milder COVID-19 symptoms compared to the Delta strain, according to conclusions set to be published by British government scientists. People living in the United Kingdom are less likely to become ill, Politico reported on Wednesday citing the study, noting high vaccination percentage as one of the main reasons driving high protection against COVID-19. Furthermore, the research is set to show that people who have been vaccinated with a booster dose have a significantly reduced chance of ending up in a hospital due to COVID-19. The report comes as the UK registers more than 90,000 new infections a day over the past week – the highest number since the start of the pandemic.

Omicron may not be milder than Delta: UK Study

Europe weighs Omicron curbs as Biden turns to military medics

• German scientists urge maximum curbs at once

* U.S. calling in military doctors to support hospitals

* NZ border reopening pushed to late February

* Restrictions reimposed in South Korea, Germany, Ireland

* Australian PM pleas for an end to lockdowns

LONDON, Dec 21 (Reuters) – Countries across Europe considered new curbs on movement on Tuesday as U.S. President Joe Biden called on military medics to support hospitals and fight the Omicron variant that has swept the world days before the second Christmas of the pandemic. Omicron infections are multiplying across Europe, the United States and Asia, including in Japan, where a single cluster https://www.reuters.com/world/coronavirus-cluster-linked-us-base-japan-grows-least-180-2021-12-20 of COVID-19 cases at a military base has grown to at least 180. Biden https struck a dire tone about the risks to the one in four American adults who remain unvaccinated. He will lay out new initiatives on testing on Tuesday, a senior administration official said. The measures include activating some 1,000 military medical personnel to support hospitals that are already being overwhelmed. Germany, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands and South Korea are among countries to have reimposed partial or full lockdowns or other social distancing measures in recent days. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland – part of the United Kingdom but with devolved responsibilities for health – set out plans for further restrictions on big public events, including sports fixtures, for three weeks after Christmas. “It will also mean unfortunately that large scale Hogmanay celebrations, including that planned here in our capital city (Edinburgh), will not proceed,” she said, refering to traditional Scottish New Year parties. New Zealand COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said his country, which imposed some of the world’s toughest COVID-19 measures, was delaying the start of a staggered reopening of its border until the end of February. “All of the evidence so far points to Omicron being the most transmissible COVID-19 variant yet,” he said. Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases on Tuesday recommended that “maximum contact restrictions” be imposed at once. Federal and state leaders were due to meet later in the day to decide on new measures, which were likely to include contact restrictions even for the vaccinated and those who have recovered from an infection, but a nationwide lockdown seemed to be off the cards. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday he was looking at all kinds of measures to keep Omicron under control. Finance minister Rishi Sunak announced 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) of extra support for businesses hit hardest by Omicron, which is hammering the hospitality sector and other businesses. Sweden will urge all employees to work from home if possible and impose tighter rules for social distancing. “We must now take joint responsibility and we need adapt to the new reality,” Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told a news conference. “I understand that many are tired of this – so am I – but we now have a new virus variant, which means we are in a new situation.” In neighbouring Denmark, Omicron is now the predominant variant, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said. Many countries in the West are pinning their hopes on third, booster vaccine shots to keep the new variant at bay amid reports that two shots may not be enough. The European Union’s drug regulator said early data shows a booster dose helps restore some protection against Omicron, although there is no evidence yet that tweaks to existing shots will be necessary. Omicron has hit financial markets hard in recent days, raising investor fears for the global economic recovery as the pandemic cuts travel and seizes up supply chains. But world shares gained on Tuesday, with the dollar softening as appetite for riskier assets made a cautious return. The broader Euro STOXX 600 rose 1.3%. Germany’s DAX’s added 1.27%, with London’s FTSE climbing 0.99%. In Australia, where Omicron cases have surged but hospitalisations remain relatively low, Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged state and territory leaders to avoid further lockdowns. “We’re not going back to lockdowns. We’re going forward to live with this virus with common sense and responsibility,” he said. In the United States, the Biden administration said it would open federal COVID-19 testing sites in New York this week and buy 500 million at-home rapid tests that Americans can order online for free. Omicron now accounts for 73% of all new cases in the United States, up from less than 1% at the beginning of the month. The variant was first detected last month in southern Africa and Hong Kong and so far has been reported in at least 89 countries. The severity of illness it causes remains unclear, but the World Health Organization warned it is spreading faster spreading than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease. More than 274 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally https://tmsnrt.rs/2FThSv7 since the pandemic began nearly two years ago. More than 5.65 million people have died.