Germany has become the latest country to pass the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 since the pandemic began.

Germany’s disease control agency said it recorded 351 additional deaths in connection with coronavirus over the past 24 hours, taking the overall toll to 100,119.

Germany is the fifth country to pass that mark in the Europe region after Russia, the UK, Italy and France.

It comes days after Germany’s health minister said the rapid rise in coronavirus cases means it is likely that everyone in the country who is not vaccinated will have caught Covid-19 by the end of the winter, and some of those will die.

The Robert Koch Institute, a federal agency that collects data from hundreds of regional health offices, said Germany also recorded a new record number of daily confirmed cases — 75,961 in a 24-hour period.

Since the start of the outbreak, Germany has had more than 5.57 million confirmed cases of Covid-19.

The surge in cases prompted Germany’s government-in-waiting on Wednesday to announce the creation of a new permanent expert group to advise officials on how to tackle the pandemic.

Hospitals have warned that intensive care beds are running out, and some facilities in the country’s south and east have begun transferring patients to other regions.