Corona vaccination: does the software disadvantage people over 80? - Söder's minister disagrees

Many elderly people in Bavaria have not yet received an appointment for a vaccination.

Meanwhile, it is always younger people who come before them.

Could the problem be with software?

Munich - For three months now, Bavaria has been vaccinated against the corona virus *.

Actually, they wanted to be through with priority group 1 in January - at the latest in February.

But delivery bottlenecks and problems with the vaccine from Astrazeneca have turned the “vaccine turbo” conjured up by Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) into a “vaccine snail”.

Now, according to research by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), there seems to be another problem that affects people over 80 in particular.

Because many of them are still waiting for a vaccination appointment today.

Allocation of vaccination appointments: does job come before age?

In Bavaria, the BayIMCO software is responsible for assigning vaccination appointments.

The algorithm on which the program is based decides who gets an appointment and when.

In a test, the BR found out that vaccination candidates are assigned a certain score in the background of the program.

For example, if an 80-year-old should register, he will be assigned the value 80.

However, prioritization group 1 not only includes older people, but also health care workers such as nurses and doctors.

The program then assigns these people a random score from 80 to 100.

And so it can happen that younger people are vaccinated earlier.

However, since the algorithm is secret, it cannot be said with certainty whether other factors also play a role in the appointment of the vaccination *.

Again and again this causes politicians and employees in the vaccination centers to find it difficult to explain.

In the Starnberg district, around 4,000 people over the age of 80 have not yet been vaccinated.

District Administrator Stefan Frey (CSU): "You get into explanatory difficulties if you don't know the algorithm exactly and if it doesn't work 100 percent as it should." In some cases, vaccination centers have now even switched to the BayIMCO software to renounce, reports the BR.

But that could lead to problems.

A vaccination summit is planned for the coming week in Bavaria (video)

Allocation of vaccination appointments: Ministry defends the algorithm

Because actually the vaccination centers are obliged to use the software.

And the Ministry of Health is also defending the algorithm.

A “virtual age” and a statistical correction factor are intended to ensure that people from certain occupational groups are evenly distributed over the priority groups.

Discrimination can definitely be ruled out, said the Ministry of Health at the BR request.

And the minister is also behind the software.

In the BR program “Jetzt red i”, Holetschek said: “Where there are errors, they are corrected and readjusted.

But I think that overall the system is fair and works at a good level. "

However, Stefan Brücklmayer, medical director of the Regen Vaccination Center, sees it differently.

He discovered numerous over-80s in the BayIMCO database who had been waiting for a vaccination appointment for more than five weeks - sometimes even for eight weeks.

A 30-year-old neighbor got an appointment after just five days due to her job.

That is why they now took a special route in Regen.

Last Sunday there was an extra vaccination appointment for the "forgotten" 80-year-olds.

The algorithm is no longer trusted in rain.

But you will have to continue to work with it.

Allocation of vaccination appointments: No control by external experts

One way for the software to regain at least some trust would be an external review by independent experts.

Katharina Zweig, who conducts research on ethics and algorithms at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, says she understands that not all information is published for security reasons.

But: "There is really nothing wrong with submitting it to a group of independent experts" to check whether the algorithm is working according to the specifications.

However, the Ministry of Health was silent on this proposal when asked by the BR.

The quality of the algorithm is continuously evaluated, it said.

"So-called fairness measures also ensure that processes are designed to be non-discriminatory," explained a ministry spokesman.

(tel)

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According to Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU), there will be a Bavarian vaccination summit in the coming week.

However, it is rather unlikely that the BayIMCO software will be discussed.