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Moderna vaccine
Photo: Jacob King / dpa
The pharmaceutical manufacturer Moderna and the Federal Ministry of Health deny reports of an alleged imminent delivery failure of hundreds of thousands of doses of Moderna vaccine.
"The April deliveries are on the way to comply with the dose ranges previously communicated to the governments," a Moderna spokeswoman told SPIEGEL.
Moderna has committed itself to fulfilling all delivery agreements agreed with the EU Commission and the member states for the quarter.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Health for Jens Spahn (CDU) announced: "Moderna has not communicated any changes to delivery schedules to us."
The Bavarian State Ministry of Health said that they only learned of the alleged delivery failure from the media.
Bavaria is chairing the conference of health ministers this year.
In the afternoon, the health ministers of the federal states also want to speak on this topic in one channel.
On Wednesday morning, the website "Business Insider" reported, citing government circles, that a batch of Moderna for Germany planned for the end of April would be canceled.
According to the Federal Ministry of Health, between 627,600 and 878,400 doses of the mRNA vaccine will then be delivered.
The delivery failure would have been a setback for the vaccination campaign;
Currently in Germany between 250,000 and 300,000 doses of all sera are inoculated per day.
If you believe the information from Moderna, this delivery is just as out of the question as a batch of 446,400 to 548,000 cans promised for the coming week.
Vaccination rate at Moderna is particularly low
No other vaccine has as high an unvaccinated population as this one.
According to the Robert Koch Institute, only 806,000 Moderna cans have been injected nationwide, that's just 45 percent of the 1.761 million cans delivered so far.
This rate is even lower than that of the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine - although the Moderna serum is considered to be highly effective and, despite its mass use in the USA, has so far produced few dangerous side effects.
In a survey by SPIEGEL among the 16 federal states, many responsible state ministries justified the low vaccination rate with a recommendation from Spahn's ministry, which had advised for a long time that Moderna always withhold 50 percent reserve for second vaccinations.
"This recommendation was only recently revoked," wrote a spokesman for the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Health.
“We have therefore asked the vaccination centers to withhold only a reserve of 25 percent of a delivery from Moderna.
Since the changeover only took place recently, there are even larger reserves available here, which are now being reduced. "
And so the vaccine could play a much more important role in the German vaccination campaign in the future.
Around 6.4 million cans are to come to Germany by the end of June - between July and September even 26.7 million.
Provided that Moderna really keeps its promises.
clh / cos / mfh
