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GRAM17 of the 20 tallest buildings in the country are in Frankfurt. Hosts of employees work there and, in normal times, visit the major banks every day. In the twin towers of Deutsche Bank, there are usually 2,500 bankers working there on 38 floors. Offices have been orphaned for months. If not, there is a traffic jam in the elevators. Only a few people are allowed in so the trip doesn’t become a contagious event.
A return to normal life in the office seems a long way off, not just in Hesse. The country could easily take advantage of the skyscrapers, company headquarters, factory grounds and offices these days, with a transformation into vaccination centers, overseen by the company’s in-house doctors. 12,000 of them are ready in Germany and are waiting to finally immunize the country.
Because the company’s doctors are vaccination professionals who give flu shots to hundreds of thousands of people each year. According to their coordinating organization, they could vaccinate more than five million employees per month, if finally allowed.
Because until now, federal policy insists on your vaccination sequence and appointment allocation at empty or overloaded vaccination centers. That should change now: because the economy offers the federal government its help with vaccination.
Several large corporations and associations propose to vaccinate employees, families, and in some cases even non-employees, in view of the previously rather slow vaccination rate in Germany. WELT learned of this from some of the companies involved. The proposal will be the subject of a meeting between businessmen and Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) on Friday.
According to information from those involved, the federal government has so far reacted quite cautiously. They prefer to discuss the test strategy, he said. According to information from business circles, many questions remain unanswered, for example in terms of liability and documentation. The BDI industry association and the BDA employers’ association, as well as the corporations, are de facto making an offer with their proposal that the federal government cannot reject.
“Like other companies, Deutsche Bank wants to do its part to solve the vaccination delay in Germany and use the excess vaccine soon,” Christian Sewing told WELT. He is the lord of the twin towers of Frankfurt, director of the Deutsche Bank. With your contribution, Germany should achieve herd immunity as soon as possible. For this reason, the bank director goes a step further and offers: “Therefore, we are fundamentally prepared to vaccinate people even if they do not work for us.”
But what kind of “vaccination jam” does Sew mean? How did Germany emerge, obviously struggling for months with a major vaccine shortage? This tide has now turned and the country has a new vaccination problem. There are currently more cans available than are actually used. And German corporations would like to have employees, family members and even third parties vaccinated.
Because in many companies and associations the slow progress of the vaccination campaign causes problems. After all, the blockade and restrictions mean great economic damage every day. A federal government vaccination report shows that just under 10.4 million doses had been delivered to Germany on Wednesday. A third of them, 3.5 million doses, have not yet been inoculated.
Chancellor Merkel aims to soon increase the number of vaccines to 10 million per week. Currently, the average value per day is just over 205,000 vaccines. An example: According to an analysis of the statistics portal “Our World in Data”, Great Britain had advanced four times faster than Germany with 7.9 as of Tuesday with 31.8 doses of vaccines administered per 100 inhabitants.
Company doctors could vaccinate employees and their families
That’s why Sewing isn’t the only one calling for a large-scale vaccination campaign. Oliver Bäte, CEO of Allianz, also offers his help to the government. His plan to provide employees at major German locations with a vaccination offer. “We are planning to establish up to 25 vaccination lines at our company premises for this purpose,” says Bäte. Preparations have already been made: things can start as soon as enough vaccine is available and employee vaccinations are possible according to the national vaccination strategy.
But that is exactly what is not going well so far, say those involved: there is little interest in the advance of the corporations; the government prefers to test. In the run-up to the meeting between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, a draft stated that corporate and corporate doctors should participate in the vaccination campaign “during the second quarter.” At the Chancellor’s subsequent press conference on Wednesday night, there was no further discussion of this.
Here, says Mathias Döpfner, director of the Axel Springer media group (to which WELT also belongs), vaccines are a crucial component in controlling the pandemic in the long term: “As Axel Springer, we want to make our contribution. That’s why we brought this idea to politicians weeks ago. The doctors of our company could, according to the planned vaccination sequence, vaccinate both our employees and, in the future, their relatives if they live in the same household. “
It is agreed that the company’s doctors are the perfect vehicle to quickly and safely expand the vaccination campaign. They have extensive experience, especially through the flu shots that countless companies offer their employees year after year.
With your support, Adidas boss Kasper Rorsted wants to allow his employees to get vaccinated, on a voluntary basis and as soon as the vaccine is widely available. “We are already doing it today with influenza vaccination,” Rorsted said, announcing: “We can also imagine helping other companies create a vaccination offer for their employees, as long as this is logistically feasible.”
Deutsche Post, Deutsche Telekom and Siemens have also confirmed to WELT that they will promote their own vaccination offerings. “We already said at the beginning of the year that if there was sufficient availability we would buy vaccines for our employees and vaccinate them, although our activities can only complement the efforts of the government,” emphasized Post chief Frank Appel.
Siemens is already supporting the federal government’s vaccination campaign. The group has been releasing the company’s doctors to work at the vaccination centers for about two months. The next step is to better integrate them into the national vaccination strategy. “Although the existing capabilities of the company’s physicians are significantly lower compared to those of the resident physician area, full potential should be used to accelerate corona vaccines,” the company announced.
Advancement support doesn’t just come from individual companies. Employers’ associations have also expressed their support for a vaccination campaign involving companies. “It is not acceptable that currently more than a million doses of vaccines that have not been reserved for second vaccinations have not been vaccinated despite the high demand for vaccines,” said a concept from the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) at the beginning of the week.
The chemical industry is now leading the way. The BAVC employers reaffirmed their offer to vaccinate also in the companies of the industry. “If more vaccines are expected to be available from April, we must use all our capabilities to put it in the arm,” said BAVC President Kai Beckmann.
In this way, companies could also “deploy open capacities in state vaccination facilities,” says Beckmann. The BAVC, which after all represents 580,000 employees in Germany, emphasized that the political guidelines on the vaccination sequence and prioritization were strictly adhered to. The main thing is to finally get more vaccines.
