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Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at a major vaccination campaign in Roskilde: "We have been in mosques, clubs and shopping malls for months to advertise the vaccination"
Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / EPA-EFE
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Sodemann, Denmark had already achieved a vaccination quota of more than 75 percent at the beginning of September.
As a result, all pandemic restrictions were lifted.
This step has now been revised and the rate of vaccination has slowed down for you too.
Who is still not vaccinated now?
Morten Sodemann:
These are very different groups: people with previous illnesses who cannot yet be vaccinated or who fear side effects.
Migrant workers from Romania, Poland or Estonia who work as unskilled workers or in agriculture and who do not have a permanent place of residence.
And people from socially disadvantaged areas who don't speak Danish properly and are exposed to a lot of misinformation.
SPIEGEL:
Are you against vaccinations or corona deniers?
Sodemann:
Not like you did.
That actually seems to me to be a phenomenon from the German-speaking area and from the Netherlands.
But there is a hard core everywhere that they can barely reach.
I'm talking about the expensive five percent because you have to put in so much more effort to convince these people.
SPIEGEL:
You are the chief physician at Odense University Hospital, in the only department for immigration medicine in Denmark.
What is your experience when it comes to vaccination?
Sodemann:
People are very different, but their fears are similar.
An incredible number of people are worried about their fertility - which has been proven to be unfounded.
However, this fear has also existed with other vaccinations.
Even among Danes.
To this day, many are still not well informed.
Mostly they watch private television from other countries or consume news on Facebook.
Many patients are then overwhelmed.
In addition, many want to know why they do not get the vaccines from us that are inoculated in their home countries, such as Sputnik or Sinovac.
What most people have in common, however, is that they can still be approached for good arguments.
You want to be convinced personally.
SPIEGEL:
Hasn't the pandemic been explained long enough?
You get the impression that you haven't talked about anything else for two years.
Sodemann:
That may be true for you and me.
But the people who are still not vaccinated don't watch the evening news.
And even if we repeat everything there five times: We won't reach this group that way.
Many unvaccinated people do not distrust the corona vaccines, but rather our society.
They have had different experiences than the majority.
Many politicians do not want to admit this realization.
But we have to work with people in such a way that they understand us.
This requires less general information and more on-site offers.
SPIEGEL:
What are you specifically thinking of?
Sodemann:
Active, outreach offers are required. You have to get the vaccination to the people because it doesn't come by itself. We have been in mosques, clubs and shopping malls for months to promote the vaccination. This requires people who are trusted. An imam or a dark-skinned doctor explaining the vaccination is often worth more than any government speech. It often depends on the individual whether a group is vaccinated. A hairdresser, a soccer ball coach or the head of the family can ultimately decide whether or not half the block can be injected. You have to convince these people. We also recorded voice messages in Arabic and distributed them via WhatsApp. Several colleagues have recorded videos in their mother tongues.Both were very well received and shared thousands of times.
SPIEGEL:
Denmark is not known for its leniency towards immigrants. Has the country changed its stance in the pandemic?
Sodemann:
I doubt that. An older man said to me some time ago at a citizens' meeting: You are only interested in us because what we do now also affects you. I'm afraid this is a very realistic observation. We struggled for a long time until there was bilingual information material. In Denmark, as in other countries, there is a very strong conviction that everyone just has to adapt. This works for about a third of the immigrants who want 110 percent to become Danish. Most of them adapt to some extent, but often find it difficult to cope with this hardship. And a small part completely refuses and isolates itself. But there is now the realization that we all have to win people over if we want society to be protected.
SPIEGEL:
Despite the problems, your country has a significantly better vaccination rate than other countries.
How did you do that?
Sodemann:
You have to prepare for war in peace.
We have more accurate data and acted early.
In Denmark a lot of personal health information is linked to the social security number.
So we knew right from the start who belonged to a risk group and were able to address people specifically.
In addition, it is reported in real time in which neighborhoods or even street blocks there are many corona infections.
This system is unique even in Northern Europe.
The authorities also have their own state ones at the start of the pandemic
Test centers built.
The districts in which only a few people were tested at the time are those in which fewer residents are vaccinated today.
So we have known for a year in which neighborhoods there are problems: The tendency is where people in socially disadvantaged circumstances and with language barriers tend to live in isolation.
The authorities also have specific data on this that showed us which languages we can use to reach these people.
SPIEGEL:
What did you do on site then?
Sodemann:
I work a lot in Vollsmose, a district of Odense with an above-average number of immigrants.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we were among the five places with the lowest test rate in Denmark.
We then tried this year to reach a particularly large number of people, also by vaccinating and informing in as many places as possible.
There are a number of medical assistants in Denmark whose mother tongue is not Danish.
We approached them specifically and asked for help.
Just like medicine students and social workers.
In July two thirds were vaccinated here too.
SPIEGEL:
What can other countries like Germany learn from this?
Sodemann:
Politicians have to recognize that people do not trust them unconditionally.
Our government has consistently appeared with experts and has endeavored to have an evidence-based corona policy.
But there were also unpopular steps: Denmark was the largest producer of mink fur in Europe.
In the past year, all animals were killed to stop the virus from being transmitted.
This is still extremely controversial today, an entire industry is dead. But at the time it was a clear sign that politics was taking responsibility.
SPIEGEL:
We are now in the middle of the fourth wave.
In Germany people are thinking about a general vaccination requirement.
In Denmark, too, there are more than 20 percent
of the general population still unvaccinated.
Is it still possible at all without coercion?
Sodemann: That
might help in certain professions.
But how do you intend to enforce a general vaccination requirement?
Maybe you can use it to spruce up the numbers.
But I doubt it will reach the majority of the unvaccinated.
They then hide and we lose them forever.
Virus diseases will continue to exist in the future.
We need trust.
SPIEGEL:
The German Minister of Health Jens Spahn recently declared that by the end of winter people in this country would either be vaccinated, recovered or dead. What follows from this drastic insight?
Sodemann:
Excuse me, but your health minister talks like an old family doctor trying to get his patient to lose weight.
I think this is not the way to go.
Such threats wear off.
What do you want to say about the next wave?
To be a vaccination expert is to be a social expert.
It is only possible with trust, at least in a democracy.
We have to pick up people where they are.
Fortunately, we in Denmark have not lost our sense of community.
We still hold on to the fact that as a society we can only get through this crisis together.
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