Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that preparations for coronavirus vaccines in Germany are underway and that the government is working on ethical guidelines on for whom vaccines should be available, Reuters reported.
The Health Ministry plans to create 60 special vaccination centers to ensure vaccines can be stored at the proper temperature and has asked the country’s 16 federal states to provide addresses by November 10, Bild reported without citing his sources.
BioNTech is developing its vaccine in partnership with Pfizer Inc.
Last month, Germany awarded $ 745 million in funding to biotech companies BioNTech and CureVac to accelerate work on COVID-19 vaccines and expand German production capacity.
Chancellor Angela Merkel told Germans to expect a “difficult winter” as the number of recently reported coronavirus cases in the country hit a new record.
Merkel spoke in Parliament today a day after she and the governors of Germany’s 16 states agreed to far-reaching restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, including closing bars and restaurants, limits on social contacts and bans on concerts. and other public events. .
Germany’s disease control agency said local health authorities reported 16,774 new positive tests for COVID-19 last day, bringing the country’s total since the start of the outbreak to about half a million. The Robert Koch Institute also recorded an additional 89 deaths, bringing the nation’s total to 10,272.
Merkel told lawmakers that Germany is in a “dramatic situation” as the winter progresses, which she says would be “four long and difficult months. But it will end.”
The longtime German leader said authorities had no choice but to drastically reduce social contacts, as three-quarters of infections in Germany can no longer be traced.
“If we wait until the ICUs are full, it will be too late,” he said.
Merkel said the democratic debate on the virus restrictions was important, but criticized some critics who have claimed that the German government is exaggerating the threat of the virus.
“Lies and misinformation, conspiracies and hatred damage not only the debate but also the battle against the virus,” he said. “It is not only the democratic debate that depends on our relationship with facts and information, human lives depend on it.”
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