Karl Lauterbach, a 58-year-old with Harvard degrees in public health and epidemiology, became a kind of Anthony S. Fauci equivalent as the pandemic unfolded and he was constantly in the public eye on German TV and in social media. He became known for his strict prescriptions for how Germany could protect itself from the spread of the disease.

Now he oversees the sprawling, $56 billion Health Ministry as the country faces another surge of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, and the prospect of more omicron cases. On Friday, the parliament passed a vaccine mandate for all health-care workers starting March 15.

“Such a vaccine mandate is necessary because it is completely unacceptable that at the end of the second year of this pandemic, people who live in care homes die unnecessarily because workers there are unvaccinated,” he told the Bundestag.