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reThe federal government has long known what Sanofi manager David Loew said last April: “Whoever gets vaccinated first will be the first out of the economic crisis.” Although the first usable vaccine from Mainz-based company Biontech together with US partner Pfizer could be developed, Germany is not yet one of the fastest “vaccination states”.
About 238,000 coronavirus vaccines have been reported according to the Robert Koch Institute on Sunday. A multiple has already been delivered, namely 1.3 million doses of vaccine to federal states, according to federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU), by the end of January it would be a total of four million, he told RTL .
In the small state of Israel with a population of nine million, on the other hand, about a million people have already been vaccinated, and other states are also reacting quickly. The Our World in Data website, operated by the University of Oxford, compares different states based on the number of doses administered there per 100 inhabitants. Consequently, Israel is clearly ahead with twelve units per 100 inhabitants, of course, not in absolute numbers, with the much larger states of the United States, China, and the United Kingdom ranking first.
The former EU status in particular shows that rapid action is also possible in Europe: with 1.4 doses of vaccine injected per 100 inhabitants, the UK is far ahead of Germany, which has 0.3 per 100 citizens, and ahead of the rest of the EU. State.
But independence from the EU does not automatically lead to a faster response, as Switzerland and Norway show: The Norwegian Ministry of Health told WELT that the country currently has 45,000 doses of vaccines and will receive 40,000 more units per week starting in June. Monday. The Scandinavian state does not want to provide information on the vaccines that have already been carried out until this week.
Like Switzerland, which according to the local Federal Public Health Office currently has “around 100,000 vaccination doses”. Compared to the population, the Confederates (nine million) and the Norwegians (five million) are worse equipped with vaccines than the Germans. By the way, despite its independence from the EU, Norway voluntarily participates in its corona vaccination program and is therefore dependent on the European association of states for recruitment.
In Germany, before the new talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and the Prime Minister of the federal states, the requests for readjustment of vaccination management are strong: in other countries, people have to try to get an appointment from vaccination by itself through hotlines, online or by means of an application ”, criticizes the vice-president of the parliamentary group of the Union, Thorsten Frei.
Older people, in particular, often have a “hard time keeping up with this digital race.” Frei hoped for “better coordination between the federal states and rapid adjustment of vaccination appointments to counter the unequal treatment of individual population groups.”
Dietmar Bartsch, chairman of the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag, told WELT: “The greatest good of the pandemic is the confidence of the people in the actions of politics. The federal government had a lot at stake ”. People and companies needed urgent planning, “rather than an extension of measures every two weeks,” criticized Bartsch. The federal states needed “a transparent and reliable calendar for the distribution of vaccines from the federal government. Citizens pay a high price for lost time and the current delivery chaos due to poor planning. “
Carsten Schneider, parliamentary managing director of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, considers that the “coordinated procedure in Europe” is correct in the procurement of vaccines, but criticizes the omissions of the Minister of Health. “At a crucial moment, Germany held the presidency of the EU Council and Jens Spahn was president of the corresponding Council of Ministers. In addition to European orders, bilateral contracts were also concluded. Vaccine ordering errors must be resolved quickly, ”said Schneider WELT. “The manufacture and distribution of the vaccine must now take priority for the Minister of Health.” To do this, Spahn must “bring together all the manufacturers of pharmaceutical products and commit them to a national initiative.”
“Everyone wants to pass the ball to the other”
Marco Buschmann, parliamentary director of the FDP parliamentary group, took up the SPD’s attacks on the health minister: “The SPD, CSU and CDU are desperately divided on the management of vaccination. Everyone wants to pass the ball to each other so that the beginning is a disaster. That has to end ”. The only priority is the question of how the vaccine shortage can be remedied as soon as possible. To do this, “the federal government must join with the pharmaceutical industry as soon as possible and explore all possibilities to increase the production of the Biontech vaccine.”
Sebastian Munzenmaier, the AfD’s deputy parliamentary group in the Bundestag, told WELT: “Instead of doing everything possible to make as many vaccines available as quickly as possible, a joint ‘European’ approach in the EU was more important for policy makers. Unsurprisingly, this project failed due to bureaucracy in Brussels. ”Münzenmaier asked the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies producing in Germany what production options might be available in the short term.
Health Minister Spahn (CDU) defended himself against criticism of the vaccination strategy: “We have ordered enough vaccines for Germany and the EU,” Spahn told the “Rheinische Post.” When asked if Germany could act alone with the pending approval of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, the minister indicated a possible departure from the EU-wide approach: “Ideally, rapid European approval.”
