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Corona: Federal government reaches vaccination target of 30 million doses that it has set itself

2021-12-26T13:56:24.079Z


Interest in vaccinations is increasing again in view of the next corona wave. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach celebrates that the goal of 30 million vaccinations by the end of the year has already been achieved.


Enlarge image

Queue on Christmas Eve in front of Cologne Cathedral: On December 24th, around 67,000 syringes were placed nationwide

Photo: Ying Tang / imago images / NurPhoto

One year after the start of the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus, a total of almost 147 million doses were administered in Germany.

This came out on Sunday from the vaccination dashboard of the Federal Ministry of Health and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Thousands of people also got the protective spades over the Christmas holidays.

Around 67,000 syringes were used on Friday, including 51,000 so-called booster vaccinations to refresh the vaccination protection.

On Christmas Day, 35,000 vaccinations were given, including 30,000 boosters.

On Sunday, the government's goal of creating 30 million vaccinations by the end of the year, starting on November 18, was achieved.

»The booster campaign in Germany is running at full speed.

We have now reached an important intermediate goal.

We can all be proud of that, ”said Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach of the German Press Agency.

The SPD politician thanked everyone who contributed - especially the doctors, but also those who had been vaccinated.

"You have done a great service to yourself and society."

By the end of January, according to the government’s new goal, the 30 million first, second and booster vaccinations should be administered again.

Lauterbach said the “Bild am Sonntag”: “I appeal to continue the high pace.

This is the only way we can sustainably prevent a hospital wave with the Omikron variant. "

As the next milestone, the government had previously planned that 80 percent of the population would have been vaccinated against the coronavirus at least once by the next planned Prime Minister's Conference on January 7th.

However, she had to postpone this goal, now she wants to create the quota by the end of January if possible, said a government spokesman for "Bild am Sonntag".

The background is therefore that so far only 74 percent of the population have been immunized and the missing 5.3 million first vaccinations could hardly be achieved by that date.

102-year-old first-time vaccinee: "I never had to regret the decision"

The official start of the vaccination campaign was December 27, 2020, but in some federal states it was started earlier.

Halberstadt, among others, made headlines nationwide with an early vaccination start on Boxing Day.

There, on December 26, 2020, the nursing home resident Edith Kwoizalla was the first to be vaccinated.

The now 102-year-old told the “Bild am Sonntag”: “I never had to regret the decision, I took everything well.” According to the report, however, she was not yet boosted: “When it was actually ready for me, it worked not so dazzling to me, so I postponed it. "

The start of the vaccination campaign was slow at the time.

The reason was a shortage of vaccines.

In the course of the spring more vaccines were available and the rate of vaccination increased noticeably.

At the end of summer and autumn, however, interest declined noticeably.

Many people had already been vaccinated twice by then, and some still refused a vaccination.

With the pile-up of the fourth corona wave, the stricter rules associated with it and the recommended booster vaccinations, the campaign picked up again at the end of the year.

Every second person was dissatisfied with the organization of the campaign.

In a survey by the YouGov opinion research institute on behalf of the German Press Agency, 19 percent of those questioned were "very dissatisfied" and another 31 percent were "somewhat dissatisfied" with how the vaccination went in the past twelve months.

In contrast, only 36 percent are "somewhat satisfied" and seven percent are "very satisfied".

Another seven percent did not provide any information.

26 percent still unvaccinated

At least 58.9 million people in Germany have so far been vaccinated twice or have received a single vaccination from Johnson & Johnson, according to the information on Sunday.

That is 70.8 percent of the total population.

At least 29.9 million people also received a »booster«.

According to the vaccination dashboard, 21.7 million people in Germany are currently still unvaccinated (26.2 percent of the population).

Of these, 4 million are aged 0 to 4 years (4.8 percent of the population), for whom vaccines are not yet available.

On the RKI dashboard, it is pointed out that the vaccination rates are to be understood as minimum vaccination rates, "since 100% coverage cannot be achieved by the reporting system".

The Robert Koch Institute assumes that the actual vaccination rate is up to five percentage points higher.

Germany has received a total of 159.9 million doses of vaccine so far (as of December 19).

Of these, 116.3 million doses were from Biontech / Pfizer's vaccine, 23.9 million from Moderna's, 14.4 million from Astrazeneca's vaccine and 5.2 million from Johnson & Johnson.

Debate on compulsory vaccination in the first week of the session

The general compulsory vaccination should be on the agenda in the Bundestag in the first week of session in the new year.

According to the deputy head of the SPD parliamentary group, Dirk Wiese, there will be a first debate at the beginning of January.

For a legally secure regulation, there were some "not easy questions in detail," said Wiese of "Bild am Sonntag".

"In particular, the question of when someone legally loses his vaccination status and therefore a refresher is necessary."

In view of the significantly more contagious Omikron variant, the Union is also urging the government to tighten the corona vaccination requirement for nurses.

According to the Federal Ministry of Health, employees in clinics and nursing homes do not have to have a booster until nine months after the second vaccination in order to meet the mandatory vaccination requirement, which will apply from mid-March.

The health policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group, Tino Sorge (CDU), told the newspaper: "The traffic light parliamentary groups will have to rework the law on mandatory vaccination for medical professions."

"We cannot afford to be uncertain about that." According to Sorge, advice should be given "promptly" to shortening the vaccination interval for the health professions.

"It would be conceivable to orientate yourself on the recommended three months of the Stiko," said Sorge.

The Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) now recommends the booster vaccination after three months, because the protection against infection drops quickly after the double vaccination.

The board of directors of the German Foundation for Patient Protection, Eugen Brysch, told the newspaper that there was a security gap in the compulsory vaccination for medical and nursing professions, because the boost was not taken into account.

abl / dpa

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-12-26

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