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VACCINE

‘First success’: Is Germany’s accelerated vaccine rollout impacting third wave?

Some 20 percent of Germans have now had the first dose of their vaccination against the coronavirus. A leading immunologist assesses whether this is already helping to lower the severity of the country's third wave of infections.

Published: 18 April 2021 12:15 CEST
'First success': Is Germany's accelerated vaccine rollout impacting third wave?
A vaccine centre in north-east Germany. dpa-Zentralbild | Stefan Sauer

Around a fifth of Germany’s 83 million inhabitants have received at least one dose of their vaccine since Germany started its vaccination programme at the end of 2020 – and the trend is rising. At the same time, only about 7 percent of the population has received the second of the doses needed for full protection.

Is Germany’s vaccination campaign nevertheless already paving the way out of the pandemic?

“With a vaccination rate of 20 percent, we have not yet had a major, significant impact on the incidence of infection, or on the number of cases,” says Carsten Watzl, head of the German Society for Immunology.

While the initial vaccination offers good protection against severe symptoms, infections are still possible, he warns.

The rollout so far has ensured that most people over 80 are now at least partially protected.

“In that group, most people are vaccinated,” says Watzl, adding that the number of deaths has dropped significantly compared to the second wave.

SEE ALSO: Merkel expresses delight after receiving first Covid-19 jab

“This is the first success of the vaccinations,” he states.

However, the RKI estimates that 36.5 million people in Germany are at increased risk of a severe Covid-19 infection, meaning that many millions of people who would benefit from a vaccine are still not protected.

“In people over 60 and people with pre-existing conditions, we have just started vaccinating. It’s going to take a while,” Watzl stresses. But building up protection for this large group is definitely achievable during the third wave, he says.

When a vaccination rate of 70 to 80 percent in this risk group has been achieved, the stress on intensive care wards will be noticeably reduced, Watzl explained.

The experience of other countries shows that the decline in the incidence of infection can be rapid once significant progress in the vaccination campaign has been made.

In Israel, more than half of the nine million population has now been completely vaccinated. Infections, serious illnesses and deaths have now plummeted, Weizman Institute researcher Eran Segal recently tweeted.

In the UK, more than 32 million people, or about half the population, have received their first vaccination. The number of new infections and deaths is falling, down from 70,000 new infections per day recorded in early January.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and medical experts such as Azeem Majeed of Imperial College London, however, attribute this not only to the vaccination campaign, but also to tough restrictions.

For months, Britons were only allowed to meet one other person outside their home, and only for exercise or a walk; leaving one’s home without a valid reason was not allowed. Even today, travel abroad and private indoor meetings are forbidden.

In Germany, the government has promised to vaccinate every willing adult before the end of the summer. But hitches in the rollout caused by rare side effects in some of the vaccines mean that this deadline is at risk, says Watzl.

“I see the danger that we will lose about half of the vaccine doses for the summer months because of these rare side effects. We won’t have enough mRNA vaccines for the under-60s for a while,” he believes.

READ MORE: GPs in Germany will soon be able to ‘choose the Covid vaccine’ they offer patients

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VACCINE

Vaccine scramble: How Spaniards want Covid jabs more than other Europeans

Whilst the EU warns that unused doses due to vaccine scepticism are piling up, Spaniards of all ages want to achieve immunity against Covid-19 as soon as possible, the data shows. 

Published: 12 July 2021 10:38 CEST
Vaccine scramble: How Spaniards want Covid jabs more than other Europeans
People queue to get the vaccine in Barcelona. Photo: Lluis Gené/AFP

In Spain, where the Covid-19 rollout has gone from one of the slowest in the EU to currently one of the fastest, pretty much everyone wants to get vaccinated. 

With priority groups almost fully immunised, Spain is still beating daily records with 600,000 to 700,000 doses administered every day. 

The spike in cases among the country’s young population has led several regions to bring forward jabs for teens and twenty-somethings ahead of people in their thirties.

Despite the apparent lack of concern for the pandemic witnessed  in packed squares and streets over the past weeks, young people who have been able to take advantage of the vaccine offer have headed en masse to the vaccination centres. 

When an Asturian youth called Ana Santos told a local newspaper that “after the elderly, it should be our turn to get vaccinated as it’s not as if people in their forties go out, is it?”, her comments went down like a tonne of bricks among this age group, who demanded it was their turn to reach full immunisation first. 

Vaccine scepticism hasn’t been a problem for Spain as it has been for other countries, with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen launching a warning recently that vaccine supplies are piling up, even though Brussels has reached its target of providing enough doses to fully vaccinate 70 percent of EU adults.

“If we look at the statistics, more and more doses remain unused,” von der Leyen told journalists in Strasbourg.

“This is linked to the fact that there is a greater distribution of vaccines, but in part also due to doubts about vaccination,” adding that it was crucial to reach the most sceptical parts of the population” in the face of the “worrying” presence of the Delta variant.

“Traditionally in Spain, we have had much less resistance or rejection towards vaccines, that’s always been the case,” vaccine expert at the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) Ángel Hernández-Merino told 20minutos. 

“In any vaccination programme, it’s vital to count on the population being willing to accept the vaccination”.

A June 2021 Eurobarometer study found that 49 percent of people in Spain want to get vaccinated “as soon as possible”, the highest rate in the entire EU (32 percent EU average). 

Whereas an average of 9 percent of EU citizens don’t ever want to get vaccinated, the rate in Spain is 4 percent.  Around 63 percent of Spaniards told Eurobarometer that they couldn’t understand why people are hesitant to get vaccinated and 71 percent said Covid vaccines are the only way for the pandemic to end. 

In Belgium, around a third of the population doesn’t want to get vaccinated.

In other countries where in the earlier stages of the Covid vaccination campaign it seemed  that available doses were easily used up it’s now becoming evident that sprinting through the age groups doesn’t guarantee that everyone is being vaccinated. 

Germany, the UK and the US, all seen as examples to Spain of how to quickly immunise a population, have all seen their campaigns slow down due to hesitancy and the summer holidays.

Spain’s Health Ministry doesn’t give data on how many people have rejected the vaccine and why, but stats do show that already more than half of the population (57.5 percent) have at least one dose and 43.3 percent are fully vaccinated. 

The Spanish government has stuck to its objective of vaccinating 70 percent of the country’s 47 million people before the end of August, even though it did fall short of its June target by more than half a million doses. 

Rather than vaccine scepticism, what’s been holding up Spain’s inoculation campaign have been doubts over the administration of second AstraZeneca vaccines and the decision to keep a reserve in case the country experienced delivery setbacks as it has in the past, with 2.9 million doses in storage reported in late June.

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