Authorities in northern Germany appealed to thousands of people on Tuesday to get another shot of COVID-19 vaccine after a police investigation found that a Red Cross nurse may have injected them with a saline solution.

The nurse is suspected of injecting salt solution into people’s arms instead of genuine doses at a vaccination centre in Friesland — a rural district near the North Sea coast — in the early spring.

“I am totally shocked by this episode,” Sven Ambrosy, a local councillor, said on Facebook as local authorities issued the call to around 8,600 residents who may have been