Berlin confirms it: stocked with vaccines. Italy late, even the snow slows us down

After announcing, last November, the success of the Italian negotiation in the hurry to the vaccine and praised European centralized purchasing as a great achievement, the government must have put his soul at peace. But while our executive, after months of negotiations, was toasting the international agreement, the Germany kept working. Basically, if our motto has always been “you can’t save yourself,” Angela Merkel A more forward-thinking “self-made” followed. And on the eve of ‘Vaccine day’ The European figures speak for themselves: 9,750 doses of PfizerBioNTech Vaccine who crossed the Brenner; 151,125 reached the sixteen German lands where 21,566 people had already been vaccinated yesterday afternoon.

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Other doses will also reach us, of course, but they may not be enough. As of today, as confirmed by Commissioner Arcuri, Pfizer will ship 469,950 doses to Italy of the vaccine per week according to the contract signed by the European Union. Meanwhile, while with 300 million doses of anti-ovine sera expected by the end of 2021 out of a total of 83 million inhabitants, Germany is a candidate to be among the first countries to achieve immunity and therefore ready to restart. ., Italy tries to catch up. Our country, in fact, has started negotiations with Pfizer and the European Commission. Modern (whose vaccine could be validated by the EMA at the January 4 meeting) to increase the offer by 50%. If Italy were successful in the venture, Moderna’s supply would increase from 10.7 to 15.7 million doses, PfizerBioNTech from 27 to 40 million, with a total of 18 million additional vials. To these, once the vaccine has been validated, the 40 million doses already agreed would be added AstraZeneca. A challenge, however, not easy when, despite the Pope’s appeals of solidarity, the hunting of strains in the world has begun.

Meanwhile, the former minister Carlo Calenda, Leader of Action, pressures the government on the ways and forces in the field to vaccinate Italians: “Speranza said that he plans to vaccinate 13 million Italians which means 26 million doses which in turn means 300,000 doses administered per day that 17 thousand people compensate the administration of vaccines. ”Considering half an hour between practices and injection, continues the opposition exponent, we calculate an average of 16 doses per operator per day. This means that 18,750 qualified operators dedicated solely to vaccination are needed. , and to date 15,000 are missing ”.

To complicate our national vaccination plan, the bad weather factoror that, as Pfizer reported last night, will delay delivery of doses in Piedmont and Liguria for at least one day and runs the risk of postponing the arrival of the vials also in other Italian regions. A scenario in which the (legitimate) German advantage, to date, is evident. This is because Germany has acted, as it admitted, also outside of the European agreements by obtaining bilaterally, thanks to a complementary order agreed in mid-December with the German BioNTech of Mainz, another 30 million doses that are added to the 55.8 million provided for by the EU agreement.

It is not all. If Germany initially received more vials (more than ten times more than expected) – we learn from Brussels – it is because it obtained from the manufacturer a delivery advance of the planned doses in December. But the timing is not random either. In fact, the delivery schedule is discussed directly by the individual countries with the pharmaceutical company and is not the responsibility of the Commission.