Covid vaccine: the Germans are already on a war footing



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Not a minute to waste. As soon as the vaccine is available, “everything will have to go very quickly”, repeats the German health minister, Jens Spahn. Not to be taken by surprise, the Germans have been preparing their vaccination campaign for several weeks. Millions of syringes are already in stock and doses ordered (at least 100 million, according to the minister).

To define priorities, the government will follow the recommendations of its Ethics Committee, the “Deutscher Ethikrat”, which 10 days ago recommended immunizing people at risk first (retirees, in particular), staff. health and “systemic” professions (teachers, police officers, etc.)

To give relief to the doctors and hospitals present, the Germans will open about sixty vaccination centers in barracks, exhibition centers or sports fields from December. “Even if the vaccine arrives later than expected, we prefer to have centers on stand-by,” explained Sabine Bätzing-Lichtenthäler, Social Democratic Minister of Health for Land Rhineland-Palatinate.

Exhibition center, ice rink or airport

Federalism obliges, the 16 German regions are responsible for the implementation of the “Vaccination Plan”. Germany, the country of the main international trade fairs and exhibitions, will above all mobilize its exhibition centers for this impressive campaign. These places are very large, functional and allow you to respect barrier gestures. “And it takes two or three days to create a center,” said Hans Peter Schneider, the patron saint of the Bremen Fair.

The city of Berlin will make available its exhibition center, a large ice skating rink, a velodrome or even the Tegel airport which closed only a few days ago.

Since the first vaccine (that of the German-American group BioNTech / Pfizer) must be stored at -70 degrees, the Ministry of Defense has made the refrigerators of the army barracks available. “Germany is ready for a mass vaccination campaign,” said Matthias Klumpp, a pharmaceutical logistics expert at the University of Göttingen.

Finally, to meet the need for staff, the government wants to mobilize medical students but also firefighters, doctors and retired charity volunteers to strengthen mobile vaccination teams for retirement homes in particular, particularly numerous in Germany. , the oldest country in the world after Japan.

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