A health worker prepares a dose of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V Covid-19 in a hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Photographer: Anita Pouchard Serra / Bloomberg
Photographer: Anita Pouchard Serra / Bloomberg
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is ready to consider using the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in Germany as she tries to calm concerns about her country’s Covid-19 inoculation program.
In a rare television appearance on Tuesday, Merkel said the Russian feature could be used to protect people in the European Union as long as it was approved by the European Medicines Agency.
“I talked to the Russian president about that exactly,” he said.
It was the first time she was interviewed in prime time since June, when Germany passed measures to offset the economic consequences of the pandemic. He spoke shortly after the medical journal The Lancet published a tentative analysis of an advanced clinical trial showing that Sputnik V provided strong protection against Covid-19.
“Today we received good data from the Russian vaccine,” Merkel said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD. “All vaccines are welcome in the EU, but only after it has been approved by EMA.”
The chancellor and her government have come under fire after she pushed Germany to cede responsibility for negotiating vaccine contracts to the European Commission. Rear delays in delivery have been blamed for slowing the distribution of fire, with Germany and its European partners lagging behind countries such as the United States and Britain.
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Merkel also reiterated her promise that all Germans will get a first vaccine against Covid-19 by the end of September, as long as drug manufacturers meet their delivery commitments.
Even if new features are not approved, there will be sufficient supplies despite previous delays, he said Monday after crisis talks with pharmaceutical executives, cabinet ministers, the country’s 16 state prime ministers and officials from the commissions. the EU.
Germany has vaccinated about 3 out of 100 people, compared to 10 in the US and almost 15 in the UK, according to the Bloomberg vaccine tracker. Although Britain and America began to be immunized several weeks earlier thanks to faster approval, Germany’s implementation has been hampered by supply problems.
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On Tuesday, the Minister of Finance, Olaf Scholz admithe stated that the EU should have ordered more vaccines against Covid-19, while defending the bloc’s agreement to negotiate jointly with pharmaceutical companies.
“We made a conscious decision to bring the vaccines together and distribute them fairly,” Scholz said at a virtual forum on Europe. “But we also have to be critical and admit “More should be ordered,” he added, stressing his support for a joint European strategy.
Scholz said the priority now is to speed up deliveries and “expand the vaccine production capacity very quickly with all the resources we have at our disposal.”
– With the assistance of Iain Rogers and Daniel Schaefer