Amid the rise in Covid-19 cases, experts and politicians criticized Germany for not buying enough doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to quickly spread their vaccination program.
“I think the current situation is a real failure,” Frauke Zipp said Saturday, an expert and advisor member of the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences told Die Welt (DW) newspaper. “Why didn’t they prescribe many more of the vaccines in the summer just to be safe? ”She said.
As a member of the EU vaccine supply scheme, Germany relies on regulators at European level to allow the vaccine to prevent Covid-19 infection. But the EU has taken longer than countries like the UK, US and Canada to approve, the DW newspaper said.
So far, only the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine has been approved in EU member states, but the block as a whole has only ordered 300 million doses in the summer, with the belief that more vaccine options available.
Meanwhile, German Health Minister Jens Spahn has rejected any proposal the government has been lacking in terms of vaccinating the country. “Things are going exactly as planned,” said the RTL broadcaster.
Spahn said he expected an initial shortfall and that the government would have to “prioritize” who would receive the vaccine but that nursing home residents would receive the inoculation by the end of January. , a DW newspaper reported.
Luxembourg’s foreign minister Jean Asselborn also defended the EU’s vaccination strategy saying the Commission had received nearly two billion doses from six different manufacturers, German radio broadcaster RBB said.
The founders of BioNTech on Friday said they were scrambling to boost production after being under pressure to fill the gaps caused by the EU failure, the DW newspaper reported.
However, Karl Lauterbach, a health expert for the center-left Social Democrats, criticized the EU for not ordering more BioNTech-Pfizer vaccines early on.
Citing the Rheinische Post newspaper, “It was clear early on that the Moderna vaccine had strong efficacy and could be used by GPs,” Lauterbach said.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to meet with key statesmen on Tuesday to discuss a possible extension of the current lock – which is about to come. to end on 10 January.
The average infection rate in Germany is 141.2 according to the Robert Koch Institute. However, this number is fluctuating across the country, with some regions of Saxony recording rates of more than 500, a DW newspaper reported.