Berlin – Germany is apparently threatened with a shortage of corona vaccines at the beginning of next year. “Indeed, we don’t have enough vaccine. That surprised many – me too, “said Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) on Tuesday evening in the ARD” Tagesthemen “. After an inventory, the experts at his company came to the conclusion that the reserves and orders for January to March were insufficient. The news caused outrage among the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) and the German Medical Association.
Lauterbach said he was already working to organize more vaccine. “I hope that I can convey a positive message there in the next few days,” he said. Efforts went through all channels, including direct to companies. “We have to gain speed here,” said the SPD politician.
In Berlin, Lauterbach’s interim inventory fell on the start of the vaccination campaign for children. On Wednesday, five to eleven year olds were vaccinated against corona for the first time in three public vaccination centers (trade fair, ICC and former Tegel Airport), selected schools (initially one per district) and also in special locations such as the Natural History Museum.
At the start, all sorts of political personnel arrived at the museum on Invalidenstrasse who had something to do directly or indirectly with the occasion: Berlin’s incumbent Health Senator Dilek Kalayci, the designated governing mayor Franziska Giffey (both SPD) and the newly appointed Federal Minister for families, seniors, women and youth, Anne Spiegel (Greens). A welcome occasion for a photo opportunity at the feet of the dinosaurs.
The responsible Senator Kalayci could not answer the question of the day whether Berlin might also run into a vaccine shortage. Only this much: doses would now be put aside for the children’s vaccinations to be used for the second vaccination of the children. A total of 120,000 vaccine doses are available for children. In general, however, it is essential to reorder quickly, because the Berlin vaccination rate must not be slowed down. In the past week there was, according to her, a record with a good 262,000 vaccinations in the city.
“Yesterday at the health ministers’ conference it was a shock that the vaccine will be scarce in the first quarter of 2022,” said Dilek Kalayci at the appointment in the museum. Like the other state health ministers, she had received an overview of the nation’s vaccine situation from Minister Lauterbach – with an indication of who was responsible: the previous government. These have not procured enough.
“The quantities are not enough to run the booster vaccination campaign,” Lauterbach was then quoted as saying. In January, only around 1.2 million vaccine doses from Biontech would be available for booster vaccinations. This is about a sixth of the previous amount.
Medical representatives are appalled by the shortage of vaccines
Andreas Gassen, Chairman of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, called this “a fatal signal” to everyone who was currently fighting the pandemic with full commitment. “It shouldn’t be true that too little vaccine was bought in the country where vaccines were developed,” the lobbyist of the resident doctors was quoted as saying in a press release.
The President of the German Medical Association was also stunned by the foreseeable deficiency. “When you hear that, your mouth stays open,” said Klaus Reinhardt on Wednesday on Deutschlandfunk. It is completely inconceivable that the logistics in a country like Germany do not work. One cannot actually imagine that the former Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) did not know anything about it, said Reinhardt.
The CDU calls Lauterbach’s criticism of his predecessor Spahn a “transparent political maneuver”
The answer from the CDU came promptly. A look at the facts shows that Lauterbach’s inventory is “a transparent political maneuver to separate the SPD from the grand coalition,” said the Union’s health policy spokesman, Tino Sorge (CDU), in a letter to his group colleagues on Wednesday. In an already politically tense situation, this also unsettles citizens without need.
“Karl Lauterbach calls fire to then play the fire brigade – although he knows that there is no fire,” says Sorges in the letter, from which several media quoted on Wednesday. With the deliveries for December, there is enough vaccine available “to be able to make a corresponding offer at short notice to the 34 million vaccinated adults for whom a booster vaccination is still pending,” it says. This also applies regardless of how much vaccine is delivered in the first quarter of 2022.
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