Vaccination strategy: blame in Berlin – politics

Hanno Kautz brought with him a remarkable message. “There is enough vaccine for Germany,” Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) spokesman said at the federal press conference on Monday. Considering many headlines, lawsuits, and complaints in the past few days, this is a surprising announcement. And you will have to classify this sentence a bit.

On this day in political Berlin, it’s again about the shakings at the beginning of the vaccination campaign in Germany, but ultimately it’s a much bigger question: Does the federal government’s decision to transfer the vaccine procurement to the European Commission led to the fact that Germans are being vaccinated later than would have been possible? This discussion has been going on for days and now it has come to politics in such a way that there are mutual accusations directly in the coalition. And it is said that cohesion in the cabinet, that is, between Angela Merkel and Jens Spahn, is affected.

the image-Zeitung reported on Monday that Merkel had instructed Spahn in early summer to transfer the negotiations to the EU Commission, although the Health Minister had previously reached an agreement with a first pharmaceutical supplier together with colleagues from France, Italy. and Holland. Spahn obeyed, but reacted internally with anger.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday that the cooperation of the four-country “inclusive vaccination alliance” was designed from the outset so other countries could participate. After the number of interested parties continued to increase, it was agreed to transfer the acquisition of the vaccine to the EU Commission, also because the European Union with 450 million inhabitants represents “a certain market power”.

The Chancellor, like the entire federal government, is behind this joint decision, says Seibert. And Spahn’s spokesman Kautz added that his minister had always backed the European path and recently announced it publicly. In government circles, however, it is certainly admitted that at one point or another there was the impression that coordination processes in the EU could run a little faster.

Germany is worse off than other countries, says SPD secretary general Lars Klingbeil

However, the federal government does not want to see any error in the decision. The route through the EU “was and is the right one,” says Seibert. When asked about the Chancellor’s personal responsibility for people having to die because too little vaccine was sent to Germany too late, Seibert doesn’t even respond. “All of our political work is aimed at reducing the number of infections and deaths,” Angela Merkel’s spokeswoman said.

Hanno Kautz even thinks that the debate is unfounded. “It would not have differentiated whether we asked for European or national,” says the Spahn spokesman. “The problem is not the orders, but the production capacities.” In other words: the Biontech company could not have delivered more vaccines than it has delivered so far, even with orders for larger quantities.

The coalition partner does not want the Health Minister to be released so easily, who is considered a figure with future potential in the CDU. SPD Secretary General Lars Klingbeil gave the line on Monday: Germany is in a worse position compared to other countries, he said in ARD, and the responsibility for this lies with Jens Spahn. Klingbeil called for “a national effort” under Merkel’s leadership. To this end, all pharmaceutical companies should now come together at a table to sound out what cooperation agreements might look like.

The leader of the union parliamentary group Ralph Brinkhaus rejected the accusations a few hours later. It is not entirely appropriate for the situation to make it “an SPD versus CDU game”. “People die every day and I don’t stand up and play coalition games,” said the leader of the parliamentary group, not without later calling a little CDU versus SPD game: “All important decisions are made in the cabinet. from the crown, “Brinkhaus said. SPD Chancellor candidate and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and other SPD ministers would also be present. In this regard, it can only warn all those responsible not to “sneak off the ship in secret.”

From Brussels it is said that they deliberately did not want to depend on a single vaccine.

In Brussels, the EU Commission once again rejects criticism of its vaccination strategy. As in Berlin, it is also said in the European capital: “We have enough vaccine.” A Commission spokesperson says the EU authority has signed contracts for two billion doses of vaccines with six different companies. From the beginning it was clear that vaccination doses could only be produced and administered gradually. It is therefore “quite surprising” that now everyone wanted to know why all the ordered doses of vaccine were not ready.

The spokesperson also responded to the question of whether the EU Commission could have asked pharmaceutical companies Biontech and Pfizer for more doses of vaccines, as Biontech chief Ugur Sahin had indicated, if only indirectly: “We do not put all our eggs in the same basket. “The philosophy behind the vaccination strategy was from the outset to have” enough vaccines from a sufficient number of manufacturers available. ” Before the approval of the first vaccine, the goal was to increase the chances that one or more of the vaccines in the portfolio would be successful.

However, it only says about the increased chances on the second try. First he talks about “minimizing risk”, which sounds less optimistic, but it is also part of the truth: at the time of the agreement on the vaccination strategy last June, it was not yet clear to any of the candidates if it would be worth the preliminary contracts are worth entering. Invest in expanding production capacities. In Brussels, some smaller member states are said to have been quite skeptical about the experimental, but also more expensive, vaccines from Biontech or Moderna, also in view of the sometimes more complicated logistics associated with these substances.

In Berlin you can hear that in the months of vaccine development there were phases in which negotiations with Biontech only continued to exist in view of the advancement of competition, but also because of the expected price and the complicated storage of the vaccine at minus 70 degrees. because Germany has promised a minimum purchase of 100 million cans. Government spokesman Seibert notes that the production capacities now available at Biontech are due among other things to the federal government’s support in the triple-digit million range.

Biontech is now expanding a second German production site in Marburg. According to the federal government, this factory could already be available at the beginning of February, which would greatly facilitate deliveries to Germany and other European countries. To see if there could and should be a development of greater production capacities, the Chancellor created on Monday a working group that she wants to chair herself and which, in addition to Spahn and Chancellor Helge Braun, also includes the Minister of Economy, Peter Altmaier , and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

And what about Hanno Kautz’s ruling that there are enough vaccines for Germany? Didn’t the Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, for example, Manuela Schwesig (SPD), say that more vaccines could be given in her country’s vaccination centers if there were more vaccines? 1.3 million doses had been delivered by the end of 2020, according to the Health Minister’s spokesman, and there would be eleven million by the end of the first quarter, as was always announced. Therefore, sufficient vaccine should not be understood in an absolute way, but relative; not in the moment, but in perspective.