At Leipzig University Hospital, pharmacy students Anne Brandt (l) and Sarah Schulz prepare six syringes from a bottle of the Biontech / Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 crown virus vaccine for vaccination. medical staff. There are currently more requests for vaccination appointments than can be offered at this time.
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Since Germany began its vaccination action in late December, along with the rest of the EU, it has faced a number of logistical challenges.
Now, almost a month after the program, its slow progress is causing frustration and concern among some German lawmakers and health professionals.
Health Minister Jens Spahn had targeted 300,000 inoculations daily, but so far the country has failed to do so. Data from the public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute, released on Tuesday showed that in the previous 24 hours just over 62,000 vaccinations were carried out (most of which were first doses).
In total, since Germany began vaccinating in all 16 states on December 27, nearly 1.2 million people in Germany (priority groups for now are health workers, residents of nursing homes). grandparents and staff and the elderly) have received a first dose of coronavirus vaccine and nearly 25,000 have received their second dose.
By contrast, the United Kingdom, which was the first country in the world to approve and deploy the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (partially developed in Germany), and then the Oxford-AstraZeneca University candidate, began its program. Covid vaccination in early December. so far it has vaccinated more than 4 million people with its first dose of vaccine (more than 450,000 have had its second dose) and exceeded 300,000 vaccines a day by the end of last week.
Wide range of problems
The EU pursued a policy of purchasing coronavirus vaccines as a bloc, but some countries, including Germany, also made their own additional purchasing agreements.
However, supply problems have been a problem even at the beginning of Germany’s vaccination campaign, with the lack of vaccines available in certain centers, as well as other difficult logistical problems related to the vaccination of its priority groups. , such as the elderly. This has created an erratic performance of vaccine deployment from one state to another in the country.
Dr. Stefan HE Kaufmann, a renowned immunologist and microbiologist in Germany and founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, told CNBC on Tuesday that the vaccination process was surrounded by challenges from the start.
“Currently, the number one priority (in the vaccination process) is the elderly and people with serious predisposing diseases, especially in nurseries. This process is ethical, but it requires a lot of time. It also includes health workers. and medical staff.Apparently some nursing home staff members are hesitant about vaccination, “he noted.
Fenna Martin (C) vaccinated Marielotte Kilian (L), 87, and Richard Kilian (R), 86, against Covid-19 at the vaccination center at the Wiesbaden Congress Center in western Germany on January 19, 2021, as in the western federal state of Hesse opened its first six vaccination centers amid the new coronavirus.
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So far, only vaccines created by Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna have been approved by the European Medicines Agency for use on the blog. The easiest (and cheapest) candidate to store and transfer from AstraZeneca and Oxford University has not yet been approved.
Time is of the essence when it comes to launching vaccines, especially in an increase in cases due to the more transmissible mutations that have been imposed. However, Germany has reported fewer cases than many of its neighbors, recording just over 2 million infections to date. The death toll is 47,958.
For both the UK and the EU, a key issue is that supply cannot meet current demand for vaccines, and Germany has been no exception, with the first reports of people struggling to get vaccination appointments in the middle. of a lack of dose. But vaccine manufacturers have pledged to increase production and deliver millions more doses to be administered in the coming weeks and months.
Meanwhile, however, “the doses secured for immediate use are insufficient,” Kaufmann noted.
“Although so-called vaccination centers have been established throughout Germany, there is currently a shortage of vaccines for maximum rapid vaccination coverage in these centers. (The hope) is that the process will be accelerated once difficult and time-consuming vaccination has been achieved, “he said, noting that the speed of the German vaccine” would have been faster if more doses of BioNTech and Moderna had been secured. “
“In my view, everything needs to be done to get more doses for immediate or short-term use. This is even more important because of the growing incidence of mutant strains that could elude vaccine-induced immune responses,” he warned.
Political criticism
Germany is not the only one to see how its vaccine slowly begins. There has been criticism across the EU at the European Commission for not getting enough vaccines for the block to start.
Florian Hense, a European economist at Berenberg, told CNBC that the approval and acquisition process meant the EU had been at the bottom of the line, or at least behind other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, in when receiving vaccine supplies.
“To the extent that the EU negotiated with pharmaceutical companies and approved vaccines on behalf of its member states, Germany’s will to vaccinate would always be ‘non-German’, regardless of what it associates with that term,” he said. Monday on CNBC.
Older people who have just been inoculated with COVID-19 wait briefly for side effects before leaving the Messe Berlin vaccine center on the opening day of the center during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. on January 18, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. The center is the third to open in Berlin. Three more will open in the coming weeks once shipments of Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines increase the pace.
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“I suspect that subsequent EU approval delayed the start of vaccinations and has since limited the pace of daily vaccinations, as vaccinations have reached the EU at a slower pace than they have done. (per capita) in the United Kingdom and the United States. “
Needless to say, there has been criticism from other parliamentarians about the government’s overall strategy. Dr Janosch Dahmen, a German doctor and MP from the Green Party, told CNBC that he was “very worried because Germany is already behind it”.
“The progress of the vaccination campaign is too slow and one of the reasons is the shortage of supply, but the most urgent problem is that the vaccination infrastructure reveals multiple problems, especially lack of staff, distribution problems in federal states and an overly centralized approach, ”he said.
“As a doctor and politician, I am very concerned about the situation here and, apart from all the effort we need to carry out a more effective vaccination campaign at the national level, we need to build bridges because of testing. , we need to work harder in the contact tracking industry, which is another important part of fighting this pandemic, ”Dahmen said.