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Experts and politicians on Saturday criticized the German government for failing to ensure an adequate supply of vaccine doses ahead of the country’s coronavirus vaccination campaign.
As a member of the EU’s vaccine purchasing program, Germany depends on regulators at the European level granting authorization of the vaccine to prevent infection with COVID-19.
But the EU has taken longer than countries like the UK, US and Canada to give the green light.
So far, only the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine has been authorized in EU member states, but the bloc as a whole has only placed an order for 300 million doses over the summer, in the belief that more vaccine alternatives would be available.
Frauke Zipp, neurologist and member of the Leopoldina Advisory Academy of Sciences, criticized German lawmakers on Saturday for their lack of foresight over vaccine purchases.
“I consider the current situation to be a blatant failure,” she said The world newspaper. “Why haven’t they ordered a lot more vaccines over the summer just to be sure?”
The founders of BioNTech said on Friday they were working to ramp up production after being forced to fill in gaps caused by the EU’s clumsiness.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has ignored any suggestion the government has been indifferent in its approach to vaccinating the country. “Things are going exactly as planned,” he told RTL.
Spahn said he expected a shortfall early on and that the government should “prioritize” who would be vaccinated but that all nursing home residents would receive the inoculation by the end of January.
Vaccination is a ‘race against time’
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has defended the EU’s vaccine strategy on German broadcaster RBB, saying the Commission has obtained nearly two billion doses from six different manufacturers.
However, Karl Lauterbach, health expert for the center-left Social Democrats, told the Rheinische substation newspaper that Brussels’ failure to buy more Moderna vaccine was “regrettable”.
“It was clear from the start that the Moderna vaccine was highly effective and could be used by general practitioners.”
Lauterbach believes it is too late for the Moderna vaccine to play a major role in Germany’s short-term vaccination needs. He also criticized the EU for not ordering BioNTech-Pfizer vaccines earlier.
Bernd Riexinger, co-chairman of the Left Socialist Party, directly called on Health Minister Jens Spahn to ensure the continued production of BioNTech-Pfizer jabs.
He said that given the spread of the new COVID-19 variant in the UK, “a successful vaccination strategy is also a race against time.”
Lockout should not end too soon
Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet state prime ministers on Tuesday to discuss a likely extension of the current lockdown – which is expected to end on January 10.
Ahead of these talks, Uwe Janssens, president of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, called on the government to rethink its plans.
He told the Rheinischer substation that tough brakes must remain in place, even if the government meets its target of an infection rate of 50 per 100,000 population.
“We intensive care physicians strongly advise that no relaxation be considered until the incidence value is less than 25 new infections per 100,000 people per week,” Janssens said.
The current infection rate in Germany is 141.2 according to the Robert Koch Institute. However, this number varies widely across the country, with parts of Saxony recording rates of over 500.
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