Lauterbach: Biontech vaccine already tightly measured
Created: 12/16/2021 Updated: 12/16/2021, 4:09 AM
Karl Lauterbach (SPD), Federal Minister of Health, is waiting for the start of a debate in the Bundestag.
© Michael Kappeler / dpa
Hundreds of thousands are currently vaccinated against the coronavirus every day.
The Biontech vaccine is particularly popular.
Is there a shortage?
Karl Lauterbach wants to take care of supplies in Eastern Europe.
Berlin - According to Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), the Biontech vaccine is already tight in the vaccination campaign against the corona virus.
Within the next three weeks, around 3.2 million cans of Biontech could be delivered in Germany, Lauterbach said on Wednesday evening on ZDF.
"But that is much less than what the doctors call up every week." The new minister had previously warned of a shortage of vaccines in the first quarter of 2022.
Therefore criticism came from the Union as well as from general practitioners.
"Those are reserves"
"In the next week we can deliver 1.2 million cans of Biontech for all of Germany, the following week 800,000 cans and then another 1.2 million cans," said Lauterbach on the program "Markus Lanz - The Year 2021".
“Those are reserves.
We pour everything out here.
Because the campaign has to run as well as it can. ”The new federal government wants to buy more than 90 million doses of Biontech vaccine for 2.2 billion euros.
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According to a report by the “Bild” newspaper (Thursday), the reason for the shortage is that Germany and the EU allowed an order option for several million additional cans of Biontech to pass by in early autumn.
The possible delivery date would have been January 2022, according to the sheet.
Neither the then Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) nor EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had pushed for an additional vaccine.
CDU raises allegations
The CDU was accused of calling Lauterbach “fire” in order to then play the fire brigade. The SPD politician emphasized that the communication about vaccine shortages was not a reproach against his predecessor Jens Spahn (CDU). There was also enough vaccine available throughout the year - but not for a very fast booster campaign. "I am now trying to buy back vaccines from Eastern European countries in an emergency."
The chairman of the German Association of General Practitioners, Ulrich Weigeldt, criticized Lauterbach's public relations work.
"Some are afraid that they can no longer be boosted," said Weigeldt of the Funke media group.
"The others refrain from the vaccination because they have the feeling that there is no point in trying to get it." That does not help.
The social association VdK demanded that if there is a foreseeable shortage of vaccines, risk groups should be given preference in the booster vaccination.
Caritas: Long-term poverty risks
Medical President Klaus Reinhardt suggested that the procurement and distribution of vaccines be transferred to the new crisis team in the Chancellery.
“What is decisive is not what is in the order books, but what ultimately arrives at the doctors on site,” Reinhardt told the editorial network Germany (RND).
From the perspective of Caritas, the corona pandemic has made long-term poverty risks visible.
"Once poor, always poor - that is a real threat to more and more people," said Caritas President Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa of the German Press Agency in Berlin.
This Thursday, the Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband wants to publish a report on the development of poverty in the pandemic.
dpa
