Experts and politicians criticized the German government on Saturday for failing to deliver a sufficient amount of vaccine doses before the country’s coronavirus vaccination campaign.
As a member of the EU Vaccine Procurement Scheme, Germany relies on European regulatory authorities to grant vaccine authorization to prevent COVID-19 infection.
But the EU has taken more than countries like the UK, the US and Canada to let go.
So far, only the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine is allowed in EU member states, but the bloc as a whole has ordered 300 million doses over the summer, convinced that more vaccination alternatives will be available.
Frauke Zipp, a neurologist and member of the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences, criticized German lawmakers on Saturday for their lack of foresight over the purchase of vaccines.
“I think the current situation is a serious failure,” she said The world newspaper. “Why didn’t they order a lot more vaccine in the summer just to be safe?”
The founders of BioNTech said on Friday that they are striving to increase production after they were pressured to fill the gaps caused by the EU blunder.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has dropped any suggestion that the government lacked skills in its approach to vaccinating the country. “Things are going exactly as planned,” he told RTL.
Spahn said he anticipates a deficiency at first and that the government will have to “prioritize” who will be vaccinated, but that all nursing home residents will receive inoculation by the end of January.
Vaccination is a “race against time”
Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn defended the EU’s vaccination strategy for German broadcaster RBB, saying the Commission had provided almost two billion doses with six different producers.
However, Karl Lauterbach, a health expert for the center-left Social Democrats, told Rheinische Post the newspaper that Brussels’ failure to buy more of the Moderna vaccine was “unfortunate”.
“It was clear at first that the Moderna vaccine was very effective and could be used by family doctors.”
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 more BioNTech-Pfizer vaccines earlier.
Bernd Riexinger, co-chair of the Socialist Left Party, directly called on Health Minister Jens Spahn to ensure the subsequent production of BioNTech-Pfizer jabs.
He said that given the spread of the new COVID-19 in the UK, “a successful vaccine strategy is also a race against time”.
The lock must not end too soon
Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet with state prime ministers on Tuesday to discuss a likely extension of the current blockade – which is set to end on January 10th.
Prior to 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 said Rheinischer Post that hard edges should remain in place, even if the government reaches the target of 50 per 100,000 people.
“Intensive care physicians strongly recommend that relaxation should not be considered until the incidence is below 25 new infections per 100,000 populations per week,” Janssens said.
The current infection rate in Germany is 141.2, according to the Robert Koch Institute. However, this number varies enormously across the country, with some regions in Saxony recording rates of over 500.