At Leipzig University Hospital, pharmacy students Anne Brandt (l) and Sarah Schulz prepare six syringes from a bottle of Biontech / Pfizer’s SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus vaccine for vaccination by medical staff. There are currently more requests for vaccinations than can currently be offered.
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Since Germany started vaccinating with the rest of the EU at the end of December, it faces a number of logistical challenges.
Now, almost a month after the program, the sluggish progress is causing frustration and concern among some German lawmakers and health workers.
Health Minister Jens Spahn has targeted 300,000 vaccinations a day, but so far the country has not been able to hit it. Data from the public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute, published Tuesday, showed that in the preceding 24 hours, just over 62,000 vaccinations (most of which were first doses) had been performed.
Since Germany began vaccination in all of its 16 states on December 27, nearly 1.2 million people in Germany (the priority groups for now health workers, nursing home residents, and staff and the elderly) have received a first dose of coronavirus. vaccine and nearly 25,000 received their second dose.
In contrast, the United Kingdom, which was the first country in the world to approve and implement the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (partly developed in Germany), and when the Oxford-AstraZeneca University candidate, launched its Covid vaccination program earlier in December begins. has so far vaccinated more than 4 million people with their first vaccine dose (more than 450,000 had their second dose) and by the end of last week there were more than 300,000 vaccinations per day.
Wide range of problems
The EU has pursued a policy of buying coronavirus vaccines as a bloc, but some countries, including Germany, have also entered into their own additional purchase agreements.
Nevertheless, supply issues were a problem already at the beginning of the vaccination of Germany, with a lack of available vaccinations seen in certain hubs, as well as other difficult logistical problems surrounding the vaccination of its priority groups, such as the elderly. This has created the effect of vaccine deployment from state to state in the country.
Dr Stefan HE Kaufmann, a well-known immunologist and microbiologist in Germany and founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Infectious Biology in Berlin, told CNBC on Tuesday that the vaccination process had been tipped over from the start.
“The main priority (in the vaccination campaign) is currently the elderly and people with serious illnesses who have been thrown away in the past, especially in nurseries. This process is ethically good, but it is very time consuming. It also includes health workers and medical staff at nursing homes and “Some of the nursing home staff are apparently hesitant about vaccination,” he said.
Fenna Martin (C) vaccines Marielotte Kilian (L), 87, and Richard Kilian (R), 86, against Covid-19 at the vaccination center installed at the congress center in Wiesbaden, West Germany, on January 19, 2021, as the western state of Hesse has opened its first six vaccination centers amid the new coronavirus.
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So far, only the vaccines created by Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna have been approved by the European Medicines Agency for use in the block. The easier to store and transfer (and cheaper) candidate from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has not yet been approved.
Time is of the essence when it comes to vaccine deployment, especially amid an increase in cases due to the more transmissible mutations that have taken hold. Yet Germany has recorded fewer cases than many of its neighbors, and so far just over 2 million infections have been recorded. The death toll stands at 47,958.
For both the UK and the EU, an important issue is that supply cannot meet the current demand for vaccines, and Germany was no exception, with early reports of people struggling to get vaccinations amid a shortage of doses. But vaccine manufacturers have promised to scale up production and deliver millions more doses in the next few weeks and months.
In the meantime, however, the “doses secured for immediate use are insufficient,” Kaufmann noted.
“Although so-called vaccination centers are located all over Germany, there is currently a shortage of vaccines for a rapid maximum vaccination in these centers. (The hope is that the process will accelerate once the difficult and time-consuming vaccination (against nursing homes) has been achieved, “he said, pointing out that the speed of vaccination of Germany” would have been faster if more doses of BioNTech and Moderna had been secured.
“In my opinion, everything must be done to ensure more doses for immediate or short-term use. This is even more important due to the increasing prevalence of mutant strains that can trigger immune responses through vaccine,” he warned.
Political criticism
Germany is not alone in seeing a sluggish start to its vaccination process. There has been EU-wide criticism of the European Commission for not getting enough vaccines for the bloc to begin with.
Florian Hense, Berenberg’s European economist, told CNBC that the approval and procurement process means that the EU has been at the back of the queue, or at least behind other countries, including the UK and the US, in receiving vaccines .
“To the extent that the EU has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies and approved vaccinations on behalf of its member states, Germany’s vaccination process would always be ‘un-German’, no matter what you associate with the term,” he told CNBC on Monday.
Elderly people who have just been vaccinated against COVID-19 wait briefly in case of side effects before leaving the center on the opening day of the coronavirus pandemic on 18 January 2021 in the vaccine center at the Messe Berlin trade fair. Berlin, Germany. The center is the third to open in Berlin. Another three will open in the coming weeks once the shipments of the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines match.
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“I suspect that the EU’s later approval delayed the start of vaccinations and has since limited the rate of vaccinations per day, as vaccinations have arrived at a slower rate in the EU than in the UK, the US ( per capita) was. “
Needless to say, there is criticism from other parliamentarians of the general strategy of the government. Dr. Janosch Dahmen, a doctor and a German Green Party MP, told CNBC that he was “very worried because Germany is already behind.”
‘The progress of the vaccination campaign is far too slow and one of the reasons is the shortage of supplies, but the more urgent problem is that the vaccination infrastructure is showing several problems, especially staff shortages, distribution problems in the federal states and a far too centralized approach, he said.
‘As a doctor and a politician, I am very concerned about the situation here and in addition to all the effort we need to deliver a more effective, nationwide vaccination campaign, we need to build bridges as a result of testing, self-testing and we need more engaging in the contact detection sector, which is another important part of fighting this pandemic, “Dahmen said.