According to a media report, Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) plans to procure 204 million corona vaccine doses for the coming year. “Thus a supply of a little more than two doses per inhabitant would be expected for Germany, including the safety reserve,” says a report by the Ministry of Health Handelsblatt should be available and was apparently presented in the cabinet on Wednesday.
According to the report, the doses are to be obtained in order to “secure additional amounts of vaccine in good time to protect against mutations and booster vaccinations.” Overall, the ministry expects costs of 3.9 billion euros in 2022. The funds are available for this.
Spahn wants to order from various vaccine manufacturers, Astra Zeneca and Curevac are apparently not among them. A second analysis of the Curevac active ingredient had recently again shown low effectiveness. It was 48 percent.
According to the report, Spahn plans with 84.4 million doses from Biontech / Pfizer. The EU had already signed a contract with the manufacturer for deliveries of up to 1.8 billion cans by 2023. In addition, 31.8 million doses of the mRNA vaccine from Moderna and 18.3 million doses of the vector vaccine from Johnson & Johnson will be ordered. A total of another 70 million cans are distributed among the substances from the manufacturers Sanofi, Novavax and Valneva. (07/01/2021)
Seven-day incidence at 5.1
The health authorities in Germany reported 892 new corona infections to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) within one day. This is evident from the numbers from Thursday morning, which reflect the status of the RKI dashboard at 4.14 a.m. For comparison: a week ago the value was 1008 infections. The RKI gave the seven-day incidence nationwide as 5.1 (previous day: 5.2; previous week: 6.6).
According to this information, 63 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours. A week ago there were 93 dead. The RKI has counted 3 729 033 detected infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic. The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher, as many infections are not detected. (07/01/2021)
Effectiveness of Curevac vaccine remains low
The disappointing study results for the vaccine from the German company Curevac have also been confirmed after a final analysis. Accordingly, the vaccine showed an effectiveness of 48 percent against Covid disease of any severity and in all age groups, as the Tübingen-based company announced. In an interim analysis two weeks ago, it was 47 percent. In the final evaluation, however, according to Curevac, a “significant protective effect” of the vaccine was observed in study participants between 18 and 60 years of age. However, they are less at risk of infection than older people.
In this age group, an effectiveness of 53 percent against a disease of any severity and of 77 percent against moderate and severe disease was observed. The vaccinated study participants at this age were fully protected from hospitalization or death – there were six cases in the group that received a placebo. For study participants over 60 years of age, who represented nine percent of the cases examined, no statistically unambiguous determination of the effectiveness was possible.
In the final analysis, a total of 228 Covid cases were examined, 83 of them in the vaccine group. In the age group from 18 to 60 years, the variant-dependent effectiveness ranged from about 42 to 67 percent. 15 virus variants were observed in the evaluation, the original virus strain, on the other hand, hardly ever occurred. A total of 40,000 subjects in ten countries in Latin America and Europe took part in the study.
Curevac stated that it is in an ongoing exchange with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to continue the approval process for the vaccine. The company’s vaccine is not included in the plans of the Federal Ministry of Health for 2022. Curevac CEO Franz-Werner Haas was nevertheless confident: “We believe that this efficacy profile makes an important contribution to overcoming the Covid 19 pandemic and dealing with the dynamic spread of the virus variants.” However, he himself had recently said that Curevac had to be 50 percent effective for an application for approval. (06/30/2021)
Almost only long-term patients on Covid wards
Almost only long-term patients are treated in the Covid intensive care units of the German clinics. “The vast majority of the around 600 Covid patients in the intensive care units are long-term patients,” says Gernot Marx, President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (Divi), the newspapers of the Funke media group. In individual cases there are also new admissions, but many of the patients in the hospitals have been in intensive care for months. Most Covid intensive care patients are between 50 and 70 years old.
In addition, thousands of patients in Germany suffer from long-term consequences of Covid disease. At the second largest German health insurance company alone, Barmer, more than 2900 insured persons were affected by long or post-Covid between November 2020 and March 2021, as an analysis of insured data from the health insurance company shows, which is available to the German Press Agency in Berlin.
Ursula Marschall, Senior Medical Officer at Barmer, assumes that many people affected are not aware that they are suffering from Long Covid because of the inconsistent symptoms. Marschall emphasized that it is not always easy to see when the acute viral infection will stop and the long-term consequences will begin. Post-Covid has only been officially coded as a disease in the doctors’ billing system since January 2021.
Of the Barmer policyholders who were initially on sick leave from January to March 2021 due to Corona, at least 6.3 percent were subsequently unable to work due to post-Covid. According to the Barmer survey, post-Covid syndromes occur more frequently in women than in men. (07/01/2021)
Travel warning lifted for over 80 risk countries
After more than a year of the corona pandemic, the advises Federal government As of tomorrow, Thursday, there will no longer be any more fundamentally off tourist trips abroad. The travel warning for the more than 80 countries classified as corona risk areas in whole or in part will also be lifted. These include all of Turkey as well as holiday areas in Spain and Croatia.
The decision to restructure the travel information was made almost three weeks ago, the step is explosive because of the rapid expansion of the delta variant. The responsible foreign minister, Heiko Maas, defends him. “The time of blanket assessments must be over,” said the SPD politician on Tuesday. “Where there are positive developments, there is no reason to maintain restrictions.” At the beginning of the pandemic on March 17, 2020, Maas issued a worldwide travel warning for tourists. The background was that at that time many vacationers were stranded and had to be brought back to Germany in an unprecedented show of strength because their flights had been canceled.
In September, the warning was then limited to corona risk areas with a new infection rate of more than 50 per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days (seven-day incidence). But even for all countries not classified as risk areas, the federal government continued to advise against vacation travel until Wednesday. Not anymore. From Thursday on there will be in the travel advice of the Federal Foreign Office three categories of countries.
The Travel warning only applies from an incidence of 200 (high incidence areas) and for areas in which dangerous virus variants have spread widely (virus variant areas). That is only 40 of a total of around 200 countries worldwide. In Europe there are no longer any high incidence areas, only Great Britain and Portugal are currently classified as virus variant areas. A travel warning from the Federal Foreign Office should primarily have a deterrent effect. Before Corona, it was only pronounced for war and crisis areas. However, the practical effects are limited. Above all, the travel warning enables holidaymakers to cancel bookings free of charge.
The following rule applies to the 26 EU countries except Germany, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland: If they are no longer classified as a risk area, the Federal Foreign Office’s travel advice will only contain “um.” special caution asked “. Exceptions are individual regions in Spain, Ireland, Croatia and Sweden.
There is a long way between these two categories more than 100 other countries outside the EUthat are either risk areas or are considered “risk free”. If there are entry restrictions or quarantine obligations after entry, the Federal Foreign Office advises against traveling there. Insofar as all entry obstacles have been lifted in one of these so-called third countries, only the advice of special caution applies. (06/30/2021)