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Monitoring as many vaccinated people as possible anonymously, quickly uncovering rare side effects – that’s the goal of the federal government. But the concept is later Contrast investigation not thought. Experts sound the alarm.
By Ursel Sieber and Markus Pohl, rbb
Germany hopes to receive vaccines against the corona virus soon. There should also be a database to be able to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people. This is considered extremely important in tracking very rare side effects. But that’s exactly what won’t happen, warns epidemiologist Ulrike Haug of the Leibniz Institute in Bremen. Therefore, he has been writing incendiary letters to the Federal Ministry of Health for weeks on behalf of the German Society of Epidemiology and other specialized societies.
Scientists want to have card readers installed in all vaccination centers so that everyone with mandatory health insurance can read their electronic medical card, just like all normal doctor visits.
Side effects can be detected quickly
This would mean that all vaccinated people would be registered. This data could then be compared, anonymously, with billing data from hospitals after two to three months. Because anyone vaccinated with a serious and rare side effect would definitely end up in the hospital. In this way, events that rarely occur can be quickly traced and unsubstantiated suspected cases can be distinguished from real risks.
Unbrauchbares Datenchaos
But reading on the chip card in vaccination centers is not included in the concept of the federal Minister of Health, Jens Spahn. Instead, the personal data of those affected must be recorded separately with the vaccination centers and then merged in the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), a separate collection of data that is difficult to link with the data of the legal health insurance and only with a huge delay. That’s why these Spahn plans make Ulrike Haug and other experts shake their heads in horror.
A survey of Contrasts The health ministries of the federal states also showed that data apparently should also be recorded differently in the federal states. Therefore, there could also be misspellings or rotated numbers. Vaccinated people could hardly be later assigned to their respective health insurance companies.
Professor Haug fears that a hard-to-use data mess will eventually emerge. Haug calls it “data acquisition at the level of the Stone Age.” She estimates that the first results on rare side effects, also in certain groups of patients, would not be available for a year, if they are.
Haug is an expert in this area. The Leibniz Institute in Bremen has been working with health insurance data for years, for example preparing studies on the safety of drugs after approval. You know exactly the pitfalls with data sets of this type.
No loss of time during follow-up
Such traps cannot be allowed to build confidence in vaccination, says the professor. For example, wild rumors about the harm of vaccines could spread through social networks without the authorities being able to react to them with facts; in their eyes, a nightmare, with fatal consequences for the population’s willingness to vaccinate and control the pandemic.
Rumors on social media
In his opinion, these problems would not exist if the vaccinated were monitored with the help of the electronic health card. One would quickly have valid comparison options, for example, if there were suspicions on social media that vaccines are associated with an increase in heart attacks.
“Then you could compare in a relatively short time: how often vaccines caused a heart attack,” Haug explains. “And how often did a comparable group of unvaccinated people have a heart attack?” Unfounded suspected cases could be pulled out of the sails so quickly. And track the real security issues at the same time. Side effects on that They only come to light in the elderly or in groups of patients with certain pre-existing conditions.
In addition, there would also be more data on the effectiveness of vaccination: it will soon be noticed if people with severe corona disease were hospitalized despite being vaccinated, and authorities could respond immediately.
Spahn sticks to his concept of vaccination
The Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) stayed awake Contrasts Application at your post. Also in the ministerial draft, the Contrasts is available, the BMG is not far from its previous project. The background apparently is that the private insured would not be taken into account if the electronic health card was registered. But Ulrike Haug does not accept this argument, since around 90 percent of German citizens are legally insured, a number large enough to identify rare side effects.
According to information from Contrasts The Paul Ehrlich Institute, responsible for vaccines, is said to have advocated for follow-up observation using an electronic health card. But to no avail.
