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reVirologist Klaus Überla from Erlangen, a member of the Standing Commission for Vaccination of the Robert Koch Institute, warns Germans not to misjudge the side effects of the Covid vaccine. “We tend to suspect a causal relationship with events that occur in rapid succession,” Überla told the FAS.
Justus bender
Policy writer for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
If people feel bad after a meal, they assumed it was the meal. Every week, seven out of every 100,000 people in Germany would suffer a stroke. If this occurs among vaccinated people, some might think the vaccine is to blame.
“All the stories of vaccine skeptics are based on isolated cases of side effects. They are then refuted in painstaking scientific work over many years. But nobody is listening anymore and they take into account: vaccines are dangerous ”. Actually, they are not, and the Covid vaccine also works against Britain’s new variant.
According to Gernot Marx of the German Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, the rare but possible side effects are harmless. It speaks of a rash, redness of the skin, chills, fever, muscle and joint pain, and swollen lymph nodes. “They are a good sign that the immune system is reacting.” It is not yet clear whether a person who has been vaccinated can transmit the virus.
Will citizens rush to report side effects?
To avoid rumors, Überla requires good documentation. Anonymous data is recorded for each vaccinated person, age, sex, district, vaccination serum and reported to the Robert Koch Institute. For side effects, the federal government has created the website Nebenffekt.bund.de and developed a mobile phone app in which vaccinated people report.
Überla is not sure if the data in the mobile app is meaningful. If citizens report something prematurely at the push of a button, that would not be comparable to the population average, which is objectively recorded.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a vaccination center in the Arena Berlin
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Image: dpa
Marx hopes that there will be a great willingness to vaccinate so that the goal of herd immunity can be achieved. Fifty to sixty million Germans have to get vaccinated against this. Überla even believes that the contact restrictions will end sooner.
“When we have vaccinated large numbers of high-risk patients, politicians have to decide whether drastic measures to reduce contact can still be justified. Then we would have avoided a large part of the serious Covid courses and deaths. The risk of a healthcare overload would have decreased significantly, ”he said. “It would be a great achievement if we could prevent seventy to eighty percent of deaths in April by vaccinating twenty percent of the population.”
The federal and state governments are pleased with their preparations for the largest vaccination campaign in history. This was the result of a survey conducted by the FAS among all state governments and the Federal Ministry of Health. Vaccinations begin on Sunday, mainly with mobile teams in homes and hospitals. Vaccination centers remain closed in many places because there is very little vaccine available.
The Länder reserve a second dose for each vaccinated person, which is administered after three weeks. “We are currently getting off to a smooth start,” says Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. “At first it will definitely shake at one point or another. The processes have to get used to them first, ”says Baden-Württemberg.
Martin Terhardt, a member of the Permanent Commission on Immunization, says: “This is a great challenge, it will certainly shake here and there. We are all doing this for the first time and we must all be aware of our responsibilities. “
Andrew Ullmann, himself an infectious disease specialist and member of the FDP Bundestag, says: “I rely on a culture of sensitive error. When something goes wrong, we have to quickly draw our conclusions and do better. ” Some federal states still have software problems in vaccination centers.
Countries receive the vaccine according to population. Bremen receives one box with 4,875 cans per week, North Rhine-Westphalia 29 boxes with 141,375 cans. That is in a document marked confidential, which the company Biontech presented to the ministers of health this week.
