Experts and politicians criticized the German government on Saturday for failing to guarantee a sufficient supply of vaccine doses before the country’s coronavirus vaccination campaign.
As a member of the EU vaccine procurement scheme, Germany depends on regulators at the European level to grant authorization for the vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection.
But the EU took longer than countries like the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada to give the green light.
So far, only the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine is allowed in EU member states, but the bloc as a whole only placed an order for 300 million doses during the summer, in the belief that more vaccine alternatives would be available.
Frauke Zipp, a neurologist and member of the Leopoldine Academy of Sciences on Saturday, criticized German lawmakers for their lack of foresight about vaccine purchases.
“I consider the current situation to be a major failure,” she said Die Welt newspaper. “Why didn’t they ask for much more of the vaccine during the summer, just in case?”
BioNTech’s founders said on Friday they were struggling to increase production after being pressured to fill in the gaps caused by the EU error.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn dismissed any suggestion that the government was indifferent in its approach to vaccinating the country. “Things are going exactly as planned,” he told RTL.
Spahn said he anticipated a deficit early and that the government would have to “prioritize” who would be vaccinated, but that all nursing home residents would receive the vaccine by the end of January.
Vaccination is a ‘race against time’
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn defended the EU’s vaccination strategy on German radio station RBB, saying the Commission had secured nearly two billion doses from six different manufacturers.
However, Karl Lauterbach, a health expert for the center-left Social Democrats, told the Rheinische Post newspaper that the failure of Brussels to buy more of the Modern vaccine was “unfortunate”.
“It was clear from the beginning that the Modern vaccine was highly effective and could be used by GPs.”
Lauterbach thinks it is too late for the Modern vaccine to play any major role in Germany’s short-term vaccination needs. He also criticized the EU for not ordering more BioNTech-Pfizer vaccines in the beginning.
Bernd Riexinger, co-chairman of the Socialist Left Party, directly asked Health Minister Jens Spahn to ensure the continuation of BioNTech-Pfizer jab production.
He said that, given the spread of the new COVID-19 variant in the UK, “a successful vaccine strategy is also a race against time”.
The blockade should not end too soon
Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to meet with state premieres on Tuesday to discuss a likely extension of the current blockade – which is expected to end on January 10.
Before these negotiations, Uwe Janssens, president of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, asked the government to rethink its plans.
He told the Rheinischer Post that strict restrictions must remain in place, even if the government reaches its target infection rate of 50 per 100,000 people.
“We, intensive care physicians, strongly advise that no relaxation should be considered until the incidence value is below 25 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants per week,” said Janssens.
The current infection rate in Germany is 141.2, according to the Robert Koch Institute. However, that number varies enormously across the country, with some regions of Saxony registering rates of more than 500.