fact finder
Status: 11/17/2021 4:07 p.m.
With the quotas of corona vaccinations, there is confusion as to whether they reflect the vaccination process. If you take a closer look at the numbers, you will see that the numbers are valid despite certain uncertainties.
Actually, it shouldn’t be a problem to determine the vaccination rates against the Sars-CoV-2 virus to the day, because all vaccinating practices and institutions have to pass them on to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on a regular basis. The reporting of all vaccinations carried out is mandatory – but from different reference dates: While these have been collected at vaccination centers since December 27th, 2020, this has only been the case with statutory health insurance physicians since March 26th, 2021 and with private and company medical practices since April 7th, 2020 June 2021.
Official database inaccurate
These numbers are used by the RKI for the Digital vaccination rate monitoring (DIM) evaluated. As with the infection data, however, there are delays and data losses: The institute assumes an underestimation of up to five percentage points for the proportion of people who have been vaccinated at least once or who have been completely vaccinated. According to RKI boss Lothar Wieler, the officially reported data should therefore be regarded as a minimum vaccination rate.
Basically, we have to distinguish between three groups: There is no vaccination recommendation for children who are eleven years of age or younger. For the group of 12 to 17 year olds, the Standing Vaccination Commission (STIKO) recommends COVID-19 vaccination with two doses of an mRNA vaccine. Everyone over the age of 18 the STIKO generally advises vaccinationprovided there are no contraindications.
There is therefore a suggestion that those who cannot receive a vaccination for medical reasons and everyone who is eleven years of age and younger should be excluded from the vaccination quota in order to obtain a more realistic picture.
Non-vaccinable probably not statistically relevant
However, neither the RKI nor the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), which is responsible for vaccines, have any data on the proportion of people who cannot be vaccinated due to health contraindications. According to the RKI, however, this group is very small: “As a rule, people who cannot be vaccinated with one of the vaccine types can be vaccinated with the other. If they are allergic to components of mRNA vaccines, vector vaccines can be used and vice versa,” said one Spokeswoman dem ARD fact finder with. “Allergies to components from both vaccines are likely to be a rarity.”
Further contraindications to the AstraZeneca vaccine Vaxzevria concern the pre-existing thrombosis-with-thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) or capillary leak syndrome. However, both are very rare. In these cases, the mRNA vaccines could again be used, the spokeswoman added.
And what about those who have recovered?
However, there are no precise statistics on the number of people recovered from COVID-19. “When estimating the number of people who have recovered, the information on whether a COVID-19 case has died and whether information on hospitalization is available is taken into account. Depending on availability, fixed time intervals are added depending on the onset of the illness or the reporting date, whereby it is assumed that the majority of the people have already recovered in this period, “said an RKI spokeswoman ARD fact finder.
Does the age structure play a role?
A more differentiated picture is obtained if one compares the vaccination rates of the individual federal states with their age structure. According to the Federal Statistical Office, this looked as follows as of December 3, 2020:
| state | 1-11 years | 12-17 years | 18-59 years | Over 60 years | total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baden-Wuerttemberg | 1260623 | 625034 | 6178939 | 3038447 | 11103043 |
| Bavaria | 1470963 | 705319 | 7347407 | 3616494 | 13140183 |
| Berlin | 429580 | 180642 | 2138015 | 915851 | 3664088 |
| Brandenburg | 270984 | 132177 | 1279901 | 848009 | 2531071 |
| Bremen | 76229 | 35896 | 380456 | 187549 | 680130 |
| Hamburg | 218627 | 94864 | 1100517 | 438470 | 1852478 |
| Hesse | 710481 | 349077 | 3490715 | 1742881 | 6293154 |
| Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | 165341 | 80917 | 809958 | 554558 | 1610774 |
| Lower Saxony | 886018 | 451469 | 4315394 | 2350540 | 8003421 |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 2014762 | 1003074 | 9819730 | 5088004 | 17925570 |
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 449865 | 220494 | 2209752 | 1218280 | 4098391 |
| Saarland | 97074 | 49188 | 516603 | 321126 | 983991 |
| Saxony | 440548 | 205730 | 2037556 | 1373107 | 4056941 |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 216948 | 105713 | 1082502 | 775521 | 2180684 |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 310472 | 161961 | 1556050 | 882392 | 2910875 |
| Thuringia | 218365 | 105509 | 1057819 | 738544 | 2120237 |
On November 15, the RKI determined the following quotas for fully vaccinated persons:
| state | 12-17 years | 18-59 years | 60+ years | total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baden-Wuerttemberg | 40.4 | 72.5 | 84.1 | 76.3 |
| Bavaria | 41.3 | 72.2 | 83.4 | 75.9 |
| Berlin | 43.0 | 74.9 | 88.4 | 79.0 |
| Brandenburg | 31.5 | 64.1 | 81.2 | 70.9 |
| Bremen | 48.7 | 91.2 | 92.9 | 91.8 |
| Hamburg | 46.0 | 84.3 | 87.0 | 85.1 |
| Hesse | 43.7 | 73.7 | 84.4 | 77.3 |
| Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | 30.5 | 69.5 | 85.4 | 76.0 |
| Lower Saxony | 50.7 | 75.4 | 88.1 | 79.9 |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 51.3 | 78.4 | 88.5 | 81.8 |
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 44.4 | 72.9 | 86.2 | 77.6 |
| Saarland | 47.4 | 80.5 | 90.1 | 84.2 |
| Saxony | 27.3 | 58.4 | 79.0 | 66.7 |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 28.3 | 65.6 | 84.3 | 73.4 |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 56.9 | 80.8 | 89.7 | 84.0 |
| Thuringia | 30.4 | 62.8 | 82.3 | 70.8 |
This results – with a certain inaccuracy due to the different reference dates – the following discrepancies between the reported vaccination rates and the proportion of those vaccinated who are older than 12 years and can therefore actually be vaccinated:
If you look at the two quotas, you can see that the ratios – in relation to the individual federal states – are nevertheless very similar. Even if you take out those who cannot be vaccinated because of their age, the basic picture does not change. If one follows the arguments of the RKI and PEI, those excluded from vaccination due to medical indications do not play a role in the statistics.