Status: 07/17/2022 09:16 a.m
So far, significantly fewer people have been vaccinated in Germany than the federal government had hoped. Now almost four million vaccine doses have to be destroyed. The CSU accuses the health minister of wasting taxes.
Because the shelf life has been exceeded, more corona vaccine has to be destroyed in Germany than previously feared. Between the beginning of December 2021 and the end of June this year, around 3.9 million corona vaccine doses expired. This was announced by the Federal Ministry of Health in response to a parliamentary question from CSU member of the Bundestag Stephan Pilsinger.
According to the information, only the vaccine from the US pharmaceutical company Moderna was affected. According to a report by the editorial network Germany (RND), the Ministry of Health assumed in April that three million doses were threatened with destruction by the end of June.
Lauterbach had reordered after taking office
Shortly after taking office from his CDU predecessor Jens Spahn, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach ordered 92 million doses of vaccine in December last year because he feared a bottleneck. Most of the orders were for the BioNTech and Pfizer drug, but Moderna’s vaccine was also included. The Budget Committee in the Bundestag released funds totaling 2.2 billion euros.
Even then there was criticism from the opposition of the actions of the SPD politician. The health policy spokesman for the Union faction, Tino Sorge, accused him of alarmism: “Karl Lauterbach calls fire to then play fire brigade – although he knows that there is no fire at all,” he wrote in December in a letter to his colleagues in the parliamentary group. This is “a transparent political maneuver to depose the SPD from the grand coalition”.
In contrast, medical representatives had welcomed Lauterbach’s follow-up appointment at the time. In addition, experts had previously advocated ordering a little more than too little vaccine in order to be prepared for all eventualities. And in the course of the vaccination campaign there were always problems with the promised delivery quantities.
CSU: “Tax money thrown out the window”
In his response to the parliamentary question, Secretary of State for Health Edgar Franke indicated that the number of expired doses could be even higher: the government only had data on expiry to the extent that doctors or pharmacies reported it to pharmaceutical wholesalers .
The CSU MP Pilsinger was “shocked” that more vaccine than expected ended up in the garbage. “Especially in times of tight budgets and inflation, the state must not throw the citizens’ tax money out the window pointlessly,” he told the RND. Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach is sitting on a “growing mountain of vaccine that is in danger of expiring”.
No need for donated vaccine
In total, the federal government ordered around 134.3 million vaccine doses between the beginning of December 2021 and the end of June this year. However, significantly fewer people were vaccinated against the corona virus than the federal government had hoped.
The fact that the vaccine doses now have to be destroyed and not passed on to other countries was apparently not due to a lack of will on the part of those responsible. The international vaccine alliance Gavi had stated that it was no longer accepting donations because there was no need.