Corona vaccinations are currently making slow progress in Germany.
Could all Germans still have a vaccination offer by the end of summer?
The federal government is sticking to the promise that every adult in Germany should receive a vaccination offer by the end of summer 2021, as
reported by echo24.de *
.
According to Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), corona vaccinations are the best, fastest and most effective way out of the corona pandemic *.
Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) even expects that everyone will have received an offer before September.
But how realistic is this promise that every adult in Germany will receive a vaccination offer by the end of this summer?
Vaccination offer for everyone by the end of summer - what is the current status?
So far, around every tenth adult in Germany has been vaccinated.
In this country, vaccinations against the coronavirus started at the end of December 2020. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 4,152,394 people in Germany (as of March 31) are already fully vaccinated, and a total of 9,620,262 people have received at least one initial vaccination .
At the current rate of vaccination it is quite unrealistic that every adult should have received a vaccination offer by the end of summer, in about six months.
For this, the vaccination process in Germany would have to be accelerated considerably.
In a country comparison, Germany does pretty badly and does not even make it into the top 10 with the current vaccination rate.
Israel currently occupies first place with a vaccination rate of 55.3 percent, closely followed by the Seychelles with a rate of 37.5 percent.
However, it should not be overlooked that Israel has far fewer inhabitants than Germany.
In Israel, 4.8 million people have been fully vaccinated so far, in Germany around 4.2 million - due to the high population, Germany has a vaccination rate of only five percent.
When looking at the number of people who have already been completely vaccinated, the front runner is the USA with around 54.6 million people.
Vaccination offer for all adults by the end of summer - is that realistic?
At the moment it looks rather bad when it comes to an accelerated vaccination process, because the British corona vaccine AstraZeneca, which is now called "Vaxzevria", is now only to be vaccinated in people over 60 years of age, according to the recommendations of the Standing Vaccination Commission (STIKO) *.
The reason for this are 31 cases of sinus vein thrombosis after AstraZeneca vaccinations, which may occur as side effects of the corona vaccine *.
Anyone under 60 can still be vaccinated with AstraZeneca, but at their own risk.
This is currently causing chaos in the vaccination centers and is likely to slow down the vaccination process in Germany for the time being.
The approval of the corona vaccine from Johnson & Johnson * by the European Medicines Agency on March 11th currently gives some hope.
The vaccine from the Tübingen-based company CureVac is also in the final phase of the approval study and could be approved in the EU as early as June *.
Deliveries of the vaccines are expected by the federal government from June.
The prerequisite for an offer for everyone by the end of summer: More vaccine
The more vaccination doses are available, the faster it can be vaccinated in Germany.
Because the problem is not the vaccination centers and overworked family doctors, but the low availability of corona vaccine doses.
According to the RKI, a total of 15,872,775 doses of vaccine had been delivered by the end of calendar week twelve on March 28, 2021.
81.4% of these doses were vaccinated during the same period.
The deliveries come from the manufacturers BioNTech / Pfizer * (10,928,775 cans), AstraZeneca (3,832,800 cans) and Moderna (1,111,200 cans).
In total, the government expects around 70 million vaccine doses in the second quarter of the year - around 40 million from Biontech, six million from Moderna and around 15 million from AstraZeneca.
According to the federal government, Johnson & Johnson * is expected to deliver 10 million vaccine doses by the end of the second quarter, and CureVac will provide 1.5 million vaccine doses.
Up to a further 300 million vaccine doses are to be delivered by the end of 2021.
However, these figures are not reliable and can change at any time.
Vaccination offer for everyone by the end of summer - a new strategy has to be more
Health expert Karl Lauterbach (SPD) calls for a different vaccination strategy: no more holding back vaccine doses for a second vaccination.
Because with all approved vaccines, the effect and protection against infections and severe or even fatal courses is already very high after the first vaccination dose.
All those who want to be vaccinated could be given a first vaccination "by the end of June", which would prevent many deaths.
The second vaccinations should then take place in the third quarter, as
reported by
the
Tagesspiegel
.
+
Karl Lauterbach, health expert for the SPD, would use a different strategy for the vaccination process in Germany.
(Symbol image)
© Kay Nietfeld / dpa
In summary it can be said: If the federal government sticks to the current vaccination strategy and if there are still delivery problems, it is very unlikely that every adult will have received a vaccination offer by the end of this summer.
To make this possible, it will probably require a new approach, and most importantly, more vaccine doses available.
* echo24.de
is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
List of rubric lists: © David Zalubowski / dpa
