Experts have long accepted that Omikron will establish itself as the dominant Corona variant in Germany. The only question is when and how quickly the much more contagious virus version will finally gain the upper hand in this country. The new German health minister Karl Lauterbach sees only one way out of the increasingly difficult pandemic situation this winter: We definitely have to boost faster than Omikron said, the SPD politician demanded.
But while Omikron is setting a breathtaking pace, the German vaccination campaign is lagging behind. It is true that new reliefs for people who have been vaccinated three times could already be decided this week – and with it new incentives for Germans to get boosted as quickly as possible. Politicians could soon shorten the intervals between second and third vaccinations significantly and thus make even more people eligible for vaccination.
But it remains questionable whether this can really significantly increase the number of vaccinations. Anyone who has recently tried to get a dose in their arms in vaccination centers, with general practitioners or in long queues in front of vaccination buses suspects that the efforts are reaching a limit: in many places doctors have long been working at the limit. In some regions there are still bottlenecks in the supply and distribution of vaccines. Dates are there, but hardly for many more millions of people who want to be vaccinated.
Germany is currently in danger of losing the race to improve the Corona situation soon this winter. This is not only due to the new and aggressive virus variant. Another reason is the surprisingly poor preparation for this pandemic winter for months. This is evident not only in the vaccination, but also in the often conceptless protection of schoolchildren or daycare children.
The goal of 30 million vaccinations by Christmas, which the new government has set, can now hardly be achieved. It is true that a good million cans are injected every day in Germany. But many hundreds of thousands more would be needed for the goal. A look into the past shows that this is possible. Doctors in Germany have already managed almost one and a half million vaccinations every day. The record values, however, come from spring and summer. The major vaccination centers in the country – they were still open then.