Challenges and problems in the vaccine strategy

Since Germany, along with the rest of the EU, started its vaccination program in late December, it has faced a series of logistical challenges.

Now, nearly a month into the program, the slow progress is causing frustration and concern among some German lawmakers and health professionals.

Health Minister Jens Spahn had targeted 300,000 vaccinations a day, but the country has failed to do so so far. Data from the public health department, the Robert Koch Institute, published Tuesday, showed that just over 62,000 vaccinations (most of which were first doses) were performed in the past 24 hours.

In total, since Germany began vaccinations in all of its 16 states on Dec. 27, nearly 1.2 million people in Germany (the priority groups for now are health workers, nursing home residents and staff and the elderly) have received a first dose of the coronavirus. vaccine and nearly 25,000 have received their second dose.

In contrast, the UK, which was the first country in the world to approve and roll out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (partially developed in Germany), and subsequently the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate, launched its vaccination program against Covid earlier in December . have so far vaccinated more than 4 million people with their first vaccine dose (more than 450,000 have had their second dose), and at the end of last week there were more than 300,000 vaccinations per day.

The EU followed the policy of buying coronavirus vaccines as a block, but some countries, including Germany, also made their own additional purchasing arrangements.

Nonetheless, delivery problems were a problem even at the start of the vaccination campaign in Germany, with a lack of available vaccines in certain centers, as well as other difficult logistical problems surrounding the vaccination of his priority groups, such as the elderly. This has led to the patchy deployment of vaccines from state to state in the country.

Dr. Stefan HE Kaufmann, a renowned immunologist and microbiologist in Germany, and founder and director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, told CNBC Tuesday that the vaccination process has faced challenges from the start.

“The first priority (in vaccination urgency) is currently the elderly and people with serious diseases that precede infectious diseases, especially in nursing homes. This process is ethically fine, but it takes a lot of time. nursing homes and hospitals. Apparently some of the nursing home staff are hesitant about vaccination, “he noted.

So far, only the vaccines made by Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have been approved by the European Medicines Agency for use in the block. The easier to store and transfer (and cheaper) candidate from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has not yet been approved.

Time is of the essence when it comes to rolling out vaccines, especially as the number of cases is soaring due to the more transmissible mutations that have emerged. Still, Germany has registered fewer cases than many of its neighbors, with just over 2 million infections to date. The death toll is 47,958.

For both the UK and the EU, a major problem is that supply cannot meet the current demand for vaccines, and Germany is no exception, with early reports of people struggling to get vaccination appointments amid a shortage of doses. But vaccine manufacturers have pledged to scale up production and deliver millions of additional doses to be delivered in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, the “doses secured for immediate use are inadequate,” noted Kaufmann.

Although so-called vaccination centers have been established throughout Germany, there is currently a shortage of vaccines for rapid maximum vaccination coverage in these centers. (The) hope is that once the difficult and time-consuming vaccination (on nursing homes) is achieved, the process will be speeded up, “he said, noting that the speed of Germany’s vaccination drive” would have been faster if more doses of BioNTech and Moderna would have been obtained. “

“In my opinion, every effort should be made to get more doses for immediate or short-term use. This is even more important because of the increasing incidence of mutant strains that could bypass vaccine-induced immune responses,” he cautioned.

Germany is not alone in seeing a slow start to its vaccination drive. There has been EU-wide criticism of the European Commission for not purchasing enough vaccines for the bloc to begin with.

Florian Hense, European economist at Berenberg, told CNBC that the approval and tender process meant the EU was at the back of the line, or at least behind other countries, including the UK and the US, when it came to receiving vaccines.

“To the extent that the EU negotiated with drug companies and approved vaccinations on behalf of its member states, Germany’s vaccination urge would always be ‘un-German’, no matter what you associate with that term,” he told CNBC on Monday.

“I suspect that the subsequent EU approval has delayed the start of vaccinations and has since limited the pace of vaccinations per day, as vaccinations arrive slower in the EU than (per capita) in the UK, US. “

Needless to say, there has been criticism from other parliamentarians of the government’s overall strategy. Dr. Janosch Dahmen, a physician and German Green Party MP, told CNBC he was “very concerned because Germany is already lagging behind.”

“The progress of the vaccination campaign has been far too slow and one of the reasons is the supply shortage, but the most pressing issue is that the vaccination infrastructure is highlighting multiple issues, especially staff shortages, distribution issues in the states and too much centralized approach, “he said.

“As a doctor and politician, I am very concerned about the situation here and apart from all the efforts we need to have a more effective nationwide vaccination campaign, we need to build bridges through testing, self-testing and we need to step up efforts in the detection sector of contacts, which is another important part of fighting this pandemic, ”Dahmen said.