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Germany has secured “up to 100 million” doses of the Biontech vaccine, Health Minister Spahn said. The EU distribution key provides only 56 million doses. Are there secret offers?
By Christian Baars and Oda Lambrecht, NDR
A first coronavirus vaccine could soon be approved in the United States and Europe. Now individual countries are trying to secure deliveries. There is a threat of “vaccine nationalism” against which the World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly warned. The question arises: How is Germany doing?
“We are assuming and have also begun to secure up to 100 million doses for Germany,” Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Tuesday, shortly after pharmaceutical companies Biontech and Pfizer announced promising data on their candidate vaccine.
Germany is only entitled to 56 million cans
100 million cans? That would be a third of the total amount that the European Union has negotiated as delivery with companies, for all member countries. Germany is the largest country in the EU. However, in population terms, you are only entitled to about 56 million doses. So where will the rest come from?
the Ed has posed this question to the Federal Ministry of Health on several occasions. However, the spokesperson repeatedly stated that he “regrettably” could not go into details. He just wrote this: it is about “the part that Germany gets from the EU treaties and which it has obtained in the course of funding research for Biontech.”
Unauthorized consideration for project funding?
The problem, however, is that this funding of € 375 million comes from a special program of the Ministry of Research, and no consideration is provided here and is not even legally possible. The Ministry of Health spokesman himself had this in an earlier request for Ed cleared up.
He wrote in early November that it was a project financing under the Federal Budget Code, adding: “The legal framework for grants does not provide for an exchange of services and therefore no reimbursement. A requirement for subsidized companies on what production quantities should be available and under what conditions is therefore not possible under the subsidy law. “
No details of agreements
The sponsored companies, which include two other German companies in addition to Biontech, “have promised, however, that they will make available an adequate proportion of the production of an approved vaccine for supply based on needs in Germany,” the spokesperson said. of the ministry.
Apparently the federal government has already been in talks with Biontech and the other manufacturers in Germany in recent months. As early as September, Spahn had said at a press conference on research funding: it was good “that the companies, in return, have agreed to provide a total of more than 40 million doses of vaccines as an option for the Federal Republic. of vaccines in case the development of a vaccine is successful to deliver. ” They had “secured it in joint arrangements,” Spahn said. But even then, neither the Health Ministry nor the Research Ministry gave details.
EU: No national efforts alone
This could be due not only to the fact that a consideration is not really legally possible, as the Ministry of Health itself explains, but also to the fact that the EU health ministers had apparently agreed among themselves not to do it alone at the national level. A spokesperson for the EU Commission emphasized this this week. He said on Tuesday that member states had promised not to “negotiate in parallel” with vaccine manufacturers so as not to undermine efforts at the European level. “This approach was supported by the EU health ministers.”
The Biontech and Pfizer companies have not yet announced any agreement with the federal government. At the request of Ed Pfizer said: “We cannot provide any information on the number of vaccine doses Germany will receive, provided our vaccine candidate is approved. The exact number is the result of negotiations between the EU and member states.”
The statements contradict each other
Specific agreements remain unclear and many statements contradict each other. Meanwhile, the German Ministry of Health argues a little differently. In response to inquiries about the agreements from which the aforementioned 100 million doses should come, the ministry spokesman said Wednesday that it did not appear that all EU members were demanding their share of the total number of vaccination doses.
But this could change “due to the latest reports.” In this case, Germany will again hold separate talks with manufacturers “to reach these 100 million.”
