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Status: 03.04.2021 6:42 pm
As soon as the appointments were activated, the systems were overloaded: in North Rhine-Westphalia, thousands tried to get vaccinated against AstraZeneca. A total of ten million people in this country have been vaccinated once, including the head of RKI.
The discussion about the possible side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine has caused a lot of uncertainty in recent days; however, thousands of people in North Rhine-Westphalia could not be prevented from spontaneously getting an appointment to get vaccinated with AstraZeneca.
Already in the early morning, the rush for vaccination appointments for those over 60 caused the telephone lines and the Internet to be overloaded. While many opted to have their fingers hurt to no avail, the first successful date hunters were still vaccinated today.
NRW has 450,000 vaccine doses to offer
The 60-year-old group departs from the usual sequence after the Standing Commission on Vaccination recommended that the AstraZeneca vaccine no longer be used in younger people. This meant that 450,000 doses of vaccine were released in the short term in North Rhine-Westphalia alone.
The background for this is the decision to stop using this vaccine in people under 60 years of age. Previously, cases of cerebral vein thrombosis had occurred in connection with vaccination, especially in younger women.
Wieler and Seibert get AstraZeneca
Therefore, Robert Koch Institute President Lothar Wieler and government spokesman Steffen Seibert were able to get vaccinated with AstraZeneca today. In a statement, Wieler wrote that he was “pleased and happy” about it.
Seibert tweeted about “Happy Easter” and shared a photo of his vaccination certificate. “First vaccinated with AstraZeneca,” he wrote. Both men are 60 years old.
Twelve percent of people in Germany are vaccinated
According to the Federal Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, about twelve percent of people in Germany have been vaccinated at least once. That’s more than ten million citizens, the CDU politician tweeted. 4.3 million people have already received the second vaccination.
According to the Robert Koch Institute and the Ministry of Health, around 217,000 doses were vaccinated on Friday alone. So far, according to Spahn, nearly 10.7 million doses of the BioNTech vaccine, 2.9 million doses of AstraZeneca and 0.7 million doses of Moderna have been administered.
One million doses of vaccines for practices
In the week after Easter, around 35,000 family doctors begin vaccinating against the coronavirus on a broad front. The Association of Family Physicians warns that after starting the practice, prioritizing vaccination takes a back seat.
“Prioritization was and is a good guideline for clinicians as long as the vaccine is available in small quantities,” said association head Ulrich Weigeldt of the “Rheinische Post”. “However, soon we will no longer have to look so much at the numbers, but more and more at people’s health,” Weigeldt added.
“A 69-year-old man with hypertension and diabetes may be more likely to receive the vaccine than a 72-year-old triathlete.” As soon as there are more vaccines on the market, the priority should be “to vaccinate as soon as possible with the approved vaccine to all who can and want.”
However, patient advocates raise objections: “The ethically established order continues to apply to vaccines offered by general practitioners. A departure in April will not be possible because vaccines are still in short supply,” said the president of the German Foundation for Patient Protection. Eugen Brysch.
The practices receive nearly a million doses of vaccines in the week after Easter. According to the Federal Minister of Health, Spahn, they only receive the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine for the first two weeks. Then AstraZeneca was added and then Johnson & Johnson.
