The highly contagious Delta variant is spreading rapidly, but the willingness to vaccinate is gradually declining in Germany. What can be done to promote vaccinations?
The particularly contagious delta variant of the corona virus is spreading more and more and at the same time the vaccination rate is falling significantly: Even if the situation is still relaxed overall, experts and specialist politicians are therefore concerned. More and more are now demanding “more creative vaccination offers”, as the health policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, Sabine Dittmar, put it in the “Welt”. Citizens should also be able to get vaccinated in pedestrian zones, housing estates and at events.
The Marburger Bund doctors’ union sees it similarly: “The local authorities need a little more creativity,” said chairwoman Susanne Johna of the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post”. “We also have to address people directly and not wait until they come to the vaccination center or to the family doctor. The lower the threshold, the better. The decisive factor is that we now also reach all those who – for whatever reasons – are still hesitant or hesitant want to be convinced. ”
Delta dominates with 59 percent
The main reason for concern is that the delta variant, which first appeared in India, is spreading rapidly. It dominated for the first time with a share of 59 percent, it was said on Wednesday evening in the latest evaluation by the Robert Koch Institute for the week before last. However, only some of the positive corona samples are examined for variants. In addition, there is the risk of under-reporting the cases: According to a study by the Mainz University Medical Center, more than 40 percent of all infected people know nothing about their infection.
The President of the German Society for Immunology, Christine Falk, therefore urgently recommends wearing masks and other corona rules, including testing. “If we don’t do anything, the thing goes through the roof,” she told the German press agency. “One can already draw the conclusion that this variant is helping more people to become infected again. Because it is easy for the virus to jump from one person to the next.”
One example for Falk is Australia. That thought it was corona-free. “And then an aircraft crew slipped through the very close-knit quarantine network.” A crew member went to a shopping mall. “There are animations, you can see how he walks past people who have caught the virus as a result. In Australia there was no longer a mask requirement.” The alpha variant couldn’t have skipped this way. “That means that at Delta only a few virus particles manage to infect a person. And we still have a large proportion of unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated people in Germany. So it is absolutely impossible here without a mask.” Keeping a distance, hygiene, ventilation and testing are also the methods of choice.
Raffles, mobile vaccination teams, more campaigns
In view of the spread of the delta, Saarland’s Prime Minister Tobias Hans is also promoting additional vaccination incentives. “One could think of a raffle in which, for example, a bicycle, a foreign language course or another nice prize is given out among those who are vaccinated,” said the CDU politician to the newspapers of the Funke media group. Mobile vaccination teams and special campaigns are particularly necessary in socially disadvantaged areas.
Protective measures could only be maintained as long as they served to prevent the health system from being overburdened, according to Hans. “If we have given everyone a vaccination offer, the vaccination is effective against the prevailing virus variants and the occupancy figures in the hospitals remain at a low level, we must gradually reduce our corona measures,” demanded the Prime Minister. In his opinion, anything else would not be constitutionally tenable.
In the past two weeks, the number of vaccinations per day in Germany has decreased significantly. According to figures from the Robert Koch Institute, 699,500 vaccine doses were administered on Tuesday, 917,000 on the Tuesday of the previous week and more than a million doses on the Tuesdays of the three weeks before.
“More than 70 percent vaccinated adults needed”
The EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides also called in the “Handelsblatt” to accelerate the vaccination campaigns. The EU will achieve its goal of having enough vaccines for 70 percent of adults by the end of July. But because virus variants “increased the transferability”, you need “more than 70 percent to be safe”.
Scientists assume, however, that the effectiveness of the vaccines against the transmission of the virus decreases over time, especially in the case of the Delta variant. Again, German experts are cautious about the announcement by the Ministry of Health in Israel, the flagship country for vaccinations, that the effectiveness of the Pfizer / Biontech vaccination in preventing infection has fallen to 64 percent.
