At Leipzig University Hospital, pharmacy students Anne Brandt (1) and Sarah Schulz prepare six syringes from a bottle of the Biontech / Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 corona virus vaccine for vaccinating the medical team. Currently, there are more requests for vaccination appointments than can be offered at the moment.
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Since Germany started the vaccination campaign 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 began, its slow progress is causing frustration and concern among some German lawmakers and healthcare professionals.
Health Minister Jens Spahn was targeting 300,000 vaccines a day, but so far the country has failed to achieve that. Data from the public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute, published on Tuesday, showed that in the previous 24 hours, just over 62,000 vaccinations (most of which were first doses) were carried out.
In total, since Germany started vaccinating in all 16 states on December 27, almost 1.2 million people in Germany (the priority groups for the time being are health workers, nursing home residents and employees and the elderly) the first dose of the vaccine coronavirus and nearly 25,000 received their second dose.
In contrast, the United Kingdom, which was the first country in the world to approve and launch the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (partly developed in Germany), and then the candidate from the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca, started its Covid vaccination program early in December, it vaccinated more than 4 million people so far with its first dose of vaccine (more than 450,000 received its second dose), and was exceeding 300,000 vaccinations a day at the end of last week.
Wide variety of problems
The EU followed a policy of purchasing coronavirus vaccines en bloc, but some countries, including Germany, also made their own additional purchase agreements.
However, supply problems have been a problem even at the beginning of Germany’s vaccination campaign, with the lack of available vaccines observed in some centers, as well as other difficult logistical issues surrounding the vaccination of its priority groups, such as the elderly. . This created an irregular performance in the implementation of the vaccine from state to state in the country.
Dr. Stefan HE Kaufmann, a renowned immunologist and microbiologist in Germany, and founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Infections in Berlin, told CNBC on Tuesday that the vaccination process was fraught with challenges from the start.
“Currently, the number one priority (in the vaccination campaign) is the elderly and people with serious pre-elimination diseases, mainly in daycare centers. This process is ethically good, but it takes a long time. It also includes health professionals and doctors in nursing homes and hospitals. Apparently, some of the nursing home staff are hesitant about vaccination, “he noted.
Fenna Martin (C) vaccine Marielotte Kilian (L), 87, and Richard Kilian (R), 86, against Covid-19 at the vaccination center installed at the congress center in Wiesbaden, western Germany, on January 19, 2021, according to the Western federal state of Hesse opened its first six vaccination centers amid the new coronavirus.
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To date, only vaccines created by Pfizer and BioNTech, and Moderna have been approved by the European Medicines Agency for use in the block. The easiest candidate to store and transfer (and cheapest) from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has not yet been approved.
Time is of the essence when it comes to vaccine launches, especially in the midst of a sudden increase in cases due to the more communicable mutations that have set in. Still, Germany has registered fewer cases than many of its neighbors, registering just over 2 million infections to date. The death toll is 47,958.
For the UK and the EU, an important issue is that supply cannot meet current vaccine demand, and Germany was no exception, with initial reports of people struggling to get vaccination markings amid a lack of doses. But vaccine makers have pledged to increase production and deliver millions more doses in the coming weeks and months.
In the meantime, however, “guaranteed doses for immediate use are insufficient,” noted Kaufmann.
“Although so-called vaccination centers have been established across Germany, there is currently a lack of vaccines to cover maximum rapid vaccination in these centers. (A) hope is that the process will be accelerated since vaccination is difficult and time consuming (in nursing homes) was carried out, “he said, noting that the speed of Germany’s vaccination campaign” would have been faster if more doses of BioNTech and Moderna had been guaranteed. “
“In my opinion, everything needs to be done to guarantee more doses for immediate or short-term use. This is even more important because of the increased incidence of mutant strains that can escape the immune responses induced by the vaccine, ”he warned.
Political criticism
Germany is not the only one to see a slow start to its vaccination campaign. Across the EU, there was criticism of the European Commission for not getting enough vaccines to get the bloc started.
Florian Hense, European economist at Berenberg, told CNBC that the approval and acquisition process meant that the EU was behind the line, or at least behind other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, when it comes to receiving supplies. vaccines.
“Since the EU has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies and approved vaccines on behalf of its member states, Germany’s vaccination campaign would always be ‘non-German’, regardless of what you associate with that term,” he told CNBC on Monday. market.
Elderly people who have just been inoculated against COVID-19 wait briefly in case of side effects before leaving the Messe Berlin fairground vaccine center on the day the center opens 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, as shipments of the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines increase.
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“I suspect that subsequent EU approval has delayed the start of vaccinations and has since limited the rate of vaccinations per day, as vaccinations have come to the EU at a slower rate than (per capita) in the UK and USA “
Needless to say, there were criticisms from other parliamentarians of the government’s overall strategy. Dr. Janosch Dahmen, a doctor and German parliamentarian at the Green Party, told CNBC he was “very concerned because Germany is already behind”.
“The vaccination campaign is progressing too slowly and one of the reasons is the lack of supply, but the most urgent problem is that the vaccination infrastructure reveals multiple problems, mainly lack of personnel, distribution problems in the federal states and a very centralized approach. too much, “he said.
“As a doctor and politician, I am very concerned about the situation here and, in addition to all the efforts we need to make for a more effective and national vaccination campaign, we need to build bridges due to tests, self-tests and we need to do more in the health sector contact tracking, which is another important part of fighting this pandemic, “said Dahmen.