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The digital vaccination certificate can be stored in the CovPass app: »This calls for further clarification«
Photo: Christian Ohde / imago images
In Germany, since the start of the vaccination campaign 13 months ago, 42.6 million more digital vaccination certificates have been issued than corona vaccine doses have been administered.
This is the result of figures from the Federal Ministry of Health, which the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (NOZ) reported on Thursday.
By last Friday, a total of 204.7 million digital certificates had been issued for corona vaccinations.
In contrast, there are 162.1 million doses of first, second and third vaccinations that have been vaccinated up to this Monday.
Citizens can receive a digital certificate with a QR code for each vaccination in order to update their digital vaccination certificate, for example in the CovPass app or the Corona-Warn-App.
However, these certificates can also be issued more than once for each vaccination.
Too many certificates need not be an indication of fake certificates
Many users of the digital vaccination certificates report on Twitter that they have actually obtained a digital certificate several times.
In some cases, the wrong name or the wrong vaccine was entered in the vaccination center, which is why it was then necessary to go to the pharmacy to obtain a correct certificate.
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Others report that many patients went to the pharmacy with their vaccination certificate from the vaccinating agency.
Apparently, the patients mistakenly considered this necessary, while the pharmacies received money for each certificate issued.
In all these cases, more than one certificate would have been counted per vaccination.
So the overhang of certificates is not necessarily an indication that millions of people are in possession of a fake digital vaccination card.
Nevertheless, the figures from the response from the Federal Ministry of Health show once again that the German vaccination campaign and especially its digital implementation was poorly explained to the citizens and was incomprehensible to them.
The deficiencies in the data collection of the vaccination campaign are revealed once again.
Ministry of Health sees no evidence of unreported vaccinations
According to the NOZ report, the ministry sees no indication of fake vaccination cards or millions of unreported vaccinations in the difference.
A ministry spokesman called "various reasons" when asked.
On the one hand, "especially at the beginning of the application, many certificates were automatically created by vaccination centers and sent to the vaccinated persons", while the persons concerned had often already received a certificate in a pharmacy.
Furthermore, certificates could "also be issued more than once, for example if a person loses their certificate," according to the NOZ report.
The vaccinations of the resident doctors are organized by the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV). According to the NOZ, this also sees no evidence that millions of insufficient vaccinations have been reported. "On the basis of the contract doctor's billing data, we assume that underreporting by the digital vaccination rate monitoring (DIM) is not generally given and therefore cannot explain the gap shown," said a KBV spokesman for the NOZ and added: "To this Explaining the gap requires in-depth analyzes of the data on the issuance of certificates, which currently only the Robert Koch Institute can carry out.«
The RKI did not want to comment and referred to the Federal Ministry of Health.
Criticism came from the opposition.
The health policy spokeswoman for the left-wing faction, Kathrin Vogler, told the NOZ: “This calls for further clarification.
The federal government urgently needs to ensure clarity.« Vogler pointed out that probably not everyone who has been vaccinated also has a digital certificate, especially among the very old.
»Then something would have gone wrong with more than every fourth vaccination.«
Backlog of vaccination certificates is increasing
The discrepancy between certificates and the doses of vaccine administered has increased significantly in recent weeks. According to the ministry, 162,397,255 digital vaccination certificates had been issued by December 15 and, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 136,641,993 vaccination doses had been administered. In mid-December, the "overhang" of certificates was "only" just under 26 million compared to currently more than 42 million.
However, in mid-December more daily corona vaccinations were administered than at any other time during the pandemic.
Many of the vaccinated people may have tried to get a digital vaccination certificate and may have applied for certificates several times.
At the same time, up-to-date digital vaccination certificates could have become even more important for many because 2G+ rules have been issued or tightened, for example in gastronomy.
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