Around half a million people were vaccinated for the first time last week. Health Minister Spahn is satisfied with the nationwide week of action. But the hoped-for turnaround did not materialize.
On the edge of the field, in bars and in front of the supermarket: In the past week, people across Germany were able to be vaccinated against the corona virus in more than 1,500 actions without an appointment. Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn draws a positive balance. “In the week of action, we managed a total of around 500,000 of the important first vaccinations, about half of which is likely to be due to actions,” said the CDU politician to the newspapers of the Funke media group. The success is due to the many clubs, organizations, private initiatives and volunteers who set up the campaign.
The background to the vaccination week is that the proportion of people vaccinated in Germany is still too low to prevent a new wave of corona and the associated overloading of the health system.
Concern for unvaccinated elderly people
While other European countries – such as Denmark, Belgium and Spain – can now boast a vaccination rate of more than 70 percent, the German vaccination campaign has stalled in the last few weeks. A look at the current (RKI) shows: Even the campaign week couldn’t change that much. While 1,286,757 corona vaccinations were reported in the period from September 4th to 10th, there were only 1,271,945 from September 11th to 17th, as a data analysis by shows.
According to Health Minister Spahn, around 500,000 initial vaccinations have increased the rate by just 0.6 percentage points. In this country, as of Monday, only 63.1 percent of the population are fully vaccinated, 67.2 percent have received a first vaccination so far. After all: Since the beginning of the vaccination week, the downward trend in primary vaccinations seems to have stabilized, and there is now an increase in booster vaccinations. Nevertheless, according to experts, it is still not enough to get through autumn and winter lightly.
The Minister of Health is particularly concerned about the large group of unvaccinated older people: “Of the 24 million people over the age of 60, just under four million are still unvaccinated, which is almost every sixth in this risk group,” said Spahn. “If a large part of this group were infected with the highly contagious Delta variant within a few weeks, our intensive care units would come under very stress,” he warned.
Incidence is rising again
So far, the government’s strategy does not seem to be enough to re-accelerate the pace of the vaccination campaign. If you want to avoid overcrowded intensive care units in winter, which the virologist Christian Drosten only recently warned about, significantly more people have to be vaccinated. Green parliamentary leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt had already criticized at the beginning of the week of action that one week alone was not enough. “We now need a widespread information campaign, from now on every week has to become an action week,” she demanded. After the federal election at the latest, the debate about the pressure on unvaccinated people could get louder.
In addition, the downward trend in the number of infections now also appears to be slowing. While the seven-day incidence had fallen continuously in the past week, it is now rising again slightly. According to the RKI, the value on Monday was 71.0; an incidence of 70.5 was reported on Sunday. Overall, however, the value is still well below the seven-day incidence of the previous week (81.9). Experts can only speculate about why this is so.
“That is the crucial question,” said Dirk Brockmann, who makes epidemiological models at the RKI, the “Spiegel”. It could be, among other things, “that the tests that are being carried out in schools are now showing an effect – that the children are sent to quarantine and chains of infection are broken. Another possibility is that more people are immune, which is an unreported number plays a role. ” In addition, the vaccination is important and also the good weather of the last few weeks. “All of these are factors that play together, but the bottom line is that we can only hypothesize why the numbers are not going up.”
