BERLIN (AP) – Slow down the blockades in the race to immunize its citizens against COVID-19, Germany faces an unknown problem: an abundance of vaccines and not enough weapons to inject them.
Like other countries in the European Union, the national vaccination campaign is far behind that of Israel, Great Britain and the United States. Now in this country there are more and more calls of 83 million to scrap the rulebook, or at least rewrite it a bit.
Germans watched with morbid fascination in January as Britain trained an army of volunteers to take coronavirus recordings, and then marveled that the UK – much more affected by the pandemic than Germany – managed more than a half on some days. million people.
The US drive-thru vaccination centers and the COVID-19 shots given in US supermarket pharmacies drew bewilderment in Germany – that is, until the country’s own plans for orderly vaccine appointments at specialty centers were overwhelmed by demand.
Britain and the United States “took a much more pragmatic approach” to vaccination, said Hans-Martin von Gaudecker, an economics professor at the University of Bonn. “What normally makes the German bureaucracy unyielding and reliable becomes an obstacle in a crisis and costs lives.”
The European Medicines Agency approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for all age groups, but several EU countries, including Germany, imposed stricter age limits.
With the stock of AstraZeneca vaccine doses in excess of 2 million, Germany wants to increase the number of people eligible for the injections so far limited to a fraction of the population: people in the highest priority group who are under 65 years of age .
France changed tactics earlier this week, allowing some over-65s to get the AstraZeneca vaccine after initially restricting its use to younger people. Health Minister Olivier Veran said the shot would soon be available to people over 50 with health problems that make them more vulnerable.
France, which ranks among the highest coronavirus toll in Europe with more than 87,000 deaths, had used only 25% of the 1.6 million AstraZeneca vaccines since Tuesday.
Age restrictions for AstraZeneca in European countries exacerbated the problems caused by initial delivery delays and some public reluctance to use the vaccine.
Still, this week’s data from the UK mass vaccination program showed that both AstraZeneca and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were about 60% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in people over 70 after just a single dose. Public Health England’s analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, also found that both vaccines were about 80% effective in preventing hospitalization in people over 80.
Belgium and Italy are also relaxing their age restrictions on the AstraZeneca vaccine as they struggle to cope with an impending third spike in COVID-19 cases caused by more contagious virus variants.
In Italy, Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s new government this week ousted the emergency tsar COVID-19 and an army general with logistics expertise and experience in Afghanistan and Kosovo put the country’s vaccination program in charge.
Denmark, meanwhile, stands out as a success story in EU vaccination. The Scandinavian nation is leading the bloc’s vaccination tables along with tiny Malta and expects to vaccinate all adults by July – well ahead of the EU’s target of 70% of adults vaccinated by September.
Rather than withholding doses for the required second injection, the Danish health authorities followed the UK model by using all available vaccines as soon as they arrived – an approach that more EU countries are now considering.
And all 6 million people in Denmark have digital health records linked to a single ID number, so authorities can pinpoint exactly who is eligible for vaccination and contact them directly. The UK authorities are also texting people directly to take photos.
“There are historical reasons why we don’t have a centralized registry like in Denmark,” said Von Gaudecker, referring to Germany’s grim history of state oppression under Nazism and Communism.
“Of course a state can do terrible things with data,” he said. “But it can also potentially do great things with data.”
Better targeting the doses available to those who need them is one way European countries hope to stay ahead of the virus in the coming months as more contagious variants spread.
France and Spain plan to give just one injection of the two-dose vaccines to some people who have recovered from COVID-19, arguing that recent infections act as partial protection against the virus.
Italy, France and the Czech Republic give priority to vaccinations in outbreak hotspots. Hungary’s leader got a Chinese COVID-19 shot last weekend and his country and Slovakia buy the Russian Sputnik V to complement other vaccines supplied by the EU. The Polish president has suggested that his country could follow Hungary’s lead in obtaining Chinese vaccines.
The number of vaccines available in the EU could increase further next week if the European Medicines Agency follows US lead in approving the single-dose vaccine manufactured by Johnson & Johnson. President Joe Biden has indicated that the US now expects to receive sufficient coronavirus vaccine for all adults by the end of May. – two months ahead of schedule.
“Obviously, if we can’t vaccinate what little we have, then we’ll have an even bigger problem if we get a lot of vaccine,” said Baerbel Bas, a lawmaker at the center-left Social Democratic Party in Germany.
Germany’s Health Minister said more than 5% of the population has now received a first dose.
“But it’s clear we need more pace,” said Jens Spahn, adding that vaccine centers will have more flexibility in deciding who to give the shots to.
Ursula Nonnemacher, the highest health official in the German state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, pledged not to keep valuable vaccine doses in storage when she announced the start of vaccinations in some doctor’s offices on Wednesday.
“Now we’re switching to overdrive,” she said.
Raf Casert in Brussels, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Aritz Parra in Madrid, Angela Charlton in Paris, Frances D’Emilio in Rome and Monika Sciclowska in Warsaw contributed to this report.
Follow up AP reporting on the virus outbreak:
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus vaccine
https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak