Rare doses and empty vaccination centers: vaccine launch headache in Germany

BERLIN / DILLENBURG, Germany (Reuters) – Proud of their national reputation for efficiency, Germans are increasingly frustrated by the slow release of a COVID-19 vaccine that scientists have helped grow.

Insufficient supply of vaccines, heavy paperwork, lack of medical staff and an elderly and immobile population are hampering efforts to obtain early doses of a vaccine developed by Pfizer in the US and German partner BioNTech in people’s arms.

Germany has set up hundreds of vaccination centers in gyms and concert halls and has the infrastructure to manage up to 300,000 fires a day, said Health Minister Jens Spahn.

But most are empty, most states do not intend to open centers until mid-January, as they prioritize sending mobile teams to nursing homes.

A day spent with a vaccination team in the small town of Dillenburg, 100 km (60 miles) north of the German financial capital Frankfurt, shows how difficult the task is.

The team begins by loading a cold box containing 84 doses of defrosted Pfizer vaccine overnight in a waiting ambulance and leaving for the Elisabeth residential care home.

There, they are met by manager Peter Bittermann, who has already handled the necessary forms for vaccinating residents and staff and provided space for the vaccines to be administered and the recipients to monitor post-vaccination.

The four-member immunization team, plus two trainees, has only a few hours to release the temperature-sensitive Pfizer vaccine before it is no longer suitable for use.

The German Red Cross needs another 350 people to run its local vaccination campaign, said Nicole Fey, a spokeswoman for the local district administration.

“We have managed to recruit some, but it can never be enough,” she told Reuters TV.

LAGURI GERMANY

In the first two weeks of vaccination, Germany gave 533,000 photos, just two-fifths of the 1.3 million doses received. Instead, the United Kingdom reached the level of 2 million.

Israel, the world leader in the share of the population covered, inoculates 150,000 people daily, with its universal and digital health system, facilitating the scheduling of appointments.

The larger size of Germany and the federal establishment complicate operations, a problem that the United States also faces.

Elsewhere in Europe, the decentralization of Spain’s vaccination operation exposed differences between regions and led to tensions with the central government.

(Chart – doses of COVID-19 vaccine given 🙂

The 16 German states blame the federal government for not providing enough doses. Doctors at some centers say the changes have been canceled. A vaccination center has been opened in Berlin, which will only be closed for the New Year due to a lack of photographs.

Spahn says production problems, rather than too few orders, are to blame for limited supply, after Pfizer and BioNTech halved their production forecast to 50 million doses by the end of the year. Each recipient requires two photos.

The government is working with BioNTech to open a new production site in the western city of Marburg, he said. BioNTech’s chief executive said last week that the Marburg plant could be up and running in February ahead of schedule.

“With the capacity we have already created in Germany, we will be able to carry out between 250,000 and 300,000 vaccinations a day – when we have the vaccine doses,” Spahn said this week.

Germany expects to receive 5.3 million photos from Pfizer / BioNTech by mid-February and another 2 million doses of a second vaccine from Moderna, just approved by the European Union, by the end of March.

However, this will barely be enough to cover the 5.7 million people, or 6.8% of the population, over the age of 80.

THE LAST THOUSAND

As in Spain, state-to-state performance in Germany varies greatly. The top of the class is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with 15.6 vaccinations per 1,000 inhabitants, while Saxony has a rate of only 4.4.

In Thuringia, another delayed, Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow said on Tuesday that many doses sent to hospitals had been returned. “If the brakes start at a vaccination rate of 30 or 33%, we have a real problem,” he told Deutschlandfunk radio.

In Saxony, the Ministry of Social Affairs said there was a lack of consent forms, route planning challenges, outbreaks of COVIDs in homes and last-minute cancellations slowed its launch.

The images in Saxony were stored centrally until recently, which means that mobile teams had to travel long distances before heading to care homes.

Unlike Dillenburg, Saxony has been overtaken by people who volunteered for its vaccination, said Lars Werthmann, regional head of logistics at the German Red Cross.

“The next gigantic task is to coordinate all of these people,” Werthmann said.

Meanwhile, doctors are expressing frustration with state-to-state booking reservation systems, saying it is confusing and erodes trust.

To speed up the launch of COVID-19 photos, Germany should distribute them through its network of family doctors’ offices as soon as there is a vaccine that can be easily stored in a refrigerator, said Berlin pediatrician Burkhard Ruppert.

Germany hopes to take photos at doctors’ offices in a second phase.

“Our strong point in Germany is this outpatient care system,” said Ruppert, who runs a local medical association. “We are not a country of widely managed systems, such as the United Kingdom or Israel.”

“We are in a race against a virus,” he added. “We will only win if we vaccinate as much and as quickly as possible.”