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Vaccination center of the BASF group in Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Photo: Uwe Anspach / dpa
The German economy wants to speed up the vaccination against the corona virus. The car manufacturer Daimler announced on Monday that it had "made all preparations to be able to start vaccinations immediately as soon as this is possible for company doctors," said Wilfried Porth, Chief Human Resources Officer. As a first step, employees have been able to register for a vaccination by the company medical service via an online platform since Monday.
"From now on, every employee can register his or her vaccination interest in order to receive a vaccination appointment at the respective location," said Porth.
According to the company, Daimler will begin a comprehensive vaccination program at all German locations as soon as the vaccine is available in the respective federal state and the vaccination is approved for company doctors.
The vaccination centers and vaccination lanes have been set up and prepared at all German locations in the last few weeks, "so that vaccination can start immediately after the vaccine has been allocated."
Nationwide, 12,000 company doctors could be deployed
It is a matter of vaccinating as many people as possible quickly in view of the increasing number of cases. According to the company, Daimler is able to vaccinate more than 3,000 times a day when fully operational at all locations. The federal and state governments want to discuss the status of vaccinations at a top-level discussion. According to the federal government, company doctors should also be routinely included in the vaccination campaign by June at the latest with increasing weekly deliveries; In some federal states there are already pilot projects.
As the »Handelsblatt« reported, the refrigerator and crane manufacturer Liebherr in Baden-Württemberg, for example, should be allowed to vaccinate its first employees from Monday. At BASF's Ludwigshafen site, a model project for the state of Rhineland-Palatinate for the corona vaccination of its own employees was started in mid-April. Volkswagen is running a similar pilot project in Zwickau.
The mechanical engineering association VDMA demanded on Sunday that the company doctors should also be involved as soon as possible so that the vaccination campaign could pick up speed. To do this, it is necessary to provide them with sufficient vaccine from the outset. In terms of effective pandemic control, it is particularly important that it is up to the company doctors themselves who to vaccinate and when, the association demanded. They would be best placed to judge who is at the greatest risk of contagion. There should be no prioritization from outside when vaccinating in companies.
The roughly 12,000 company doctors in Germany say they could vaccinate around five million doses of vaccine a month.
According to current figures from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), almost 19.5 million people across Germany had received at least one vaccination by Monday.
This corresponds to a population share of 23.4 percent.
Almost six million people (7.2 percent of the population) have now been vaccinated twice.
beb / afp