The corona vaccinations in the EU countries are progressing rather slowly.
Dissatisfaction is also growing in Germany.
Karl Lauterbach attacks the European Union.
Berlin - Actually, with the approval of the
corona vaccine from Biontech *
and Pfizer,
the start into a better future should succeed.
But only a few days after the first people in
Germany were given
the serum, criticism of the common vaccination strategy of the
European Union (EU) is
getting louder.
Biontech boss Ugur Sahin was amazed at the EU's purchasing policy.
In the meantime, the company announced that it was "in advanced discussions" with the EU about an increased amount of vaccines.
SPD *
health expert Karl Lauterbach
nevertheless made it clear
to the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
:
"In my opinion, the EU has bought wrongly."
Corona vaccine: EU bought 300 million doses - the US twice as many
With a total of
300 million doses
, the EU only
gets half of the amount of vaccine
that was purchased by the
USA
from Biontech and Pfizer.
Of these
,
only
three to four million vaccine doses
are expected to
arrive
in
Germany by the end of January
.
During the first quarter,
Health Minister Jens Spahn
plans
with eleven to 13 million.
For Karl Lauterbach that is far too little.
"The situation is unsatisfactory," said the
Social Democrat
.
According to Lauterbach,
the EU’s action, which is
far too
hesitant
, is also bitter for the politician.
According to this, experts could have foreseen in early summer that
Biontech / Pfizer
and the US
biotech company Moderna
had succeeded in
producing
"extremely strong" vaccines.
Nevertheless, it took the EU a very long time to
negotiate
with the vaccine manufacturers.
It wasn't until
November
that Biontech ordered its vaccination doses, the USA had already bagged a deal in the summer.
The aim is
Europe
also
to
100 million additional doses
of BioNTech agent
dispensed
have.
Another problem: In its vaccination strategy, the European Union relied on a portfolio of several potential vaccines from different suppliers.
Among them was the serum from
Sanofi
and
GlaxoSmithKline.
The
contract
for up to
300 million doses of
the vaccine was signed in mid-September 2020.
In December, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline announced that delivery was delayed.
The EU is suddenly short of millions of vaccine doses.
Corona vaccine: Virologist Sutter defends EU strategy
So has the EU in the fight against the
coronavirus *
failed?
There are also other voices who understand what Europe is doing.
Gerd Sutter
from the
Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich
thinks
this is understandable.
The
virologist
believes that the effectiveness of the corona vaccines from Biontech, Moderna and Astra Zeneca was not clear over the summer.
Even if the
first studies gave
the vaccine candidates good chances of doing so.
"These tests with regard to tolerability and immunological activity do not allow
any conclusions to be drawn about the effectiveness of
a vaccine," said Sutter.
In the worst case, the EU could have backed
the wrong horse
.
“Imagine if you had ordered hundreds of millions of doses of this very expensive vaccine, with which there is no experience on the market, and then another, cheaper vaccine like that from Sanofi and GSK would be the first to be approved ", described Sutter.
"Then everyone would have complained that they hadn't primarily ordered this vaccine."
Video: After vaccination starts - calls for faster production
Corona vaccine: different vaccination intervals as a means to combat shortages?
Perhaps there is also
another solution to
the acute
shortage of vaccines
within the EU countries.
The chairman of the standing vaccination committee at the Robert Koch Institute, Thomas Mertens, brought a
different vaccination interval
into play.
Accordingly, the
interval between the first and second vaccination of
a patient may be variable.
"Since the protection is already very good even after a vaccination, it is definitely worth considering if there is a lack of vaccines, giving preference to the first vaccination."
Lauterbach also sees this possibility.
He advocates a
second vaccination after 12 weeks
, three weeks have been planned so far.
"This way we can compensate for the shortage somewhat in the next three months," said Lauterbach.
(kh) * Merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network