14 vaccinated residents of a nursing home in Germany received a British variant of the coronavirus

According to the report, residents of a home in Belm, near Osnabrück, received the second dose on January 25 of a vaccine jointly developed by German BioNTech and American Pfizer. On February 2, one of the workers had a positive rapid test, so all residents and all staff were screened. Analysis of the samples showed that 14 vaccinated residents had entered the body with a version of the virus, B 1.1.7, identified in the UK, which was considered more contagious than before.

So far, only asymptomatic or mild symptoms of virus-induced disease (Covid-19) have been found in the nursing home.

This positive development can be attributed to the beneficial effects of vaccination, said Burkhard Riepenhoff, spokesman for the district administration. Starting Monday, in addition to the BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, a third serum, the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, will also be used in the vaccination campaign in Germany. According to local EU regulations, Oxford / AstraZeneca should only be given to people under the age of 65.

Drawing on the experience of the first weeks of the campaign, which began in late December, they are relaxing on a set of rules that will allow them to use the limited amount of vaccine more flexibly. The main change will be that shipments of the BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will be used to vaccinate all people over the age of 80 for the time being, so this age group may be protected against Covid-19 earlier than planned, Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a statement Sunday.

The second wave of the epidemic, which intensified last fall, is diminishing in Germany, which is mainly due to the fact that the national lockdown introduced in November and hardened in December reduced the number of contacts and personal contacts at risk of contagion. . The closure, which freezes most areas of economic and social life, is valid until February 14. The federal and provincial heads of government will discuss on February 10 how to continue the defense from February 15.

According to a poll on Sunday, one in two Germans would oppose loosening the restrictions. The largest group in the population, 37 percent, would prolong the shutdown and another 13 percent would toughen the rules. Thirty percent of the population would consider relaxation appropriate and 13 percent would withdraw all epidemiological precautions, according to a survey by the YouGov survey company. According to the Robert Koch Institute for Public Health (RKI), nearly 4 percent of the German population, 3,116,122, had been vaccinated against SARS-Cov-2 as of Sunday, 903,271 of whom had received both doses of the vaccine.

In the past 24 hours, 8,616 infections have been tested across the country and 231 deaths have been reported in association with Covid-19. This is a significant decrease from 11,192 recorded infections and 399 deaths a week earlier. With the new cases, SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 2,284,010 people, bringing the number of victims to 61,517.