BERLIN — Germany has purchased a million pills to treat COVID-19 from US pharmaceuticals company Pfizer, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said in Berlin on Tuesday.

The first deliveries of the antiviral medication Paxlovid are expected to arrive in January, Lauterbach told dpa, adding that the drug looked very promising, Deutsche press agency (dpa) reported.

"I expect that this will enable us to prevent numerous serious cases in intensive care units," he said.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency approval for Paxlovid shortly before Christmas. The German minister has said that his country will also give it the green light.

According to the manufacturer, patients take three pills twice daily over a five-day period. The drug contains the active ingredient nirmatrelvir, which inhibits a SARS-CoV-2 protein to stop the virus from replicating.

While drugs like Paxlovid are considered by experts to be a vital tool in the fight against Covid-19, they are far more expensive and often more difficult to administer than vaccines.

Following almost 491,000 additional jabs administered on Monday, Germany's vaccination rate stands at 70.9 per cent, according to the nation's Robert Koch Institute for disease control. That is 59 million people who have received two doses, or one shot of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

At least 30.4 million people have received a booster shot on top of that, or 36.6 percent of the population.

As the Omicron variant of the coronavirus gains ground in Germany, the government and public health officials have warned of a surge in new cases in January.

Shortly before Christmas, the federal and state governments agreed to sweeping new restrictions to slow the spread. These came into effect across large parts of the country on Tuesday.

People living in the states of Bavaria, Berlin, Hesse, North Rhine Westphalia, Saarland, Saxony, Schleswig Holstein and Thuringia have all been ordered to limit their contact with others.

In many places, the measures limit to 10 the number of people who can meet in one place for private gatherings, even if they are vaccinated. This excludes children under 14 years old.

If there are unvaccinated people present, the limit is one household and a maximum of two people from another household.

Similar measures are already in place in much of the rest of the country. — Agencies