Authorities are currently making various plans for managing a Covid resurgence later in the year, Heunicke said on Friday at a parliamentary committee.

“We don’t know what it will be. It could be something like Omicron, a subvariant or a completely new variant,” he said.

“So we must have different scenarios for what exactly we will be dealing with,” he said.

Vaccines will be considered an important tool which authorities will use to help prevent new restrictions, the minister said.

In all scenarios, elderly segments of the population would receive a booster vaccination first, he said.

Denmark currently has no Covid-19 restrictions in place, having lifted most social and travel restrictions during the early part of the spring.

Authorities have also reduced the current risk assessment level for Covid-19 to the lowest possible level for the first time since the pandemic began. That means the level of alert for hospitals and other parts of the health service is reduced.

Nevertheless, infections with the virus are still recorded by the national infectious disease control agency, State Serum Institute (SSI) on a daily basis.

“So even though we now know a lot more about this disease than we knew two and a half years ago, there are also things we don’t know because it keeps attacking us with new variants,” Heunicke said.

Although infection numbers are expected to increase again after the summer, the minister said booster vaccinations in the form of third or fourth doses of a Covid-19 vaccine would not be offered to the public at the current time.

Denmark announced the suspension of its national Covid-19 vaccination programme in April.

“We must be sure that it’s the right time (to respond),” Heunicke said.

Plans for national responses to various scenarios are expected to be completed before parliament takes its summer vacation. Political parties will then be involved in finalisation of the plans.