Munich starts vaccinating children between the ages of five and eleven in the new Gasteig children’s vaccination center on Thursday. This is open daily between 9 a.m. and 5.45 p.m. the entrance is in the foyer of the Philharmonie. Mayor Verena Dietl announced that Biontech will initially deliver 36,000 doses of the special children’s vaccine. The aim is to vaccinate up to 800 children a day – exclusively in the Gasteig; Older children and adults can still use the vaccination center in Riem and the branch offices at Marienplatz, on Theresienwiese, in the KVR and in the Pasing Arcaden.
Parents can take their children www.impfzentren.bayern or register for vaccination by calling (089) 904 29 22 22. An appointment is then available at www.wir-impfen-muenchen.de possible. In the early Tuesday morning there were still appointments free for the next few days, but the site was apparently overloaded after a while. “It is currently not possible to make a booking,” said the website in the morning. Sometimes the site was not accessible at all.
Pediatricians mainly work in the children’s vaccination center on Gasteig. The vaccination booths are designed for children, for example there is a lion and a hedgehog booth. Health officer Beatrix Zurek: “We have created a child-friendly environment in Gasteig that both children and parents are used to from pediatric practices.”
A round table on Tuesday afternoons also dealt with child vaccination; all corona issues were outsourced there by the city council’s general assembly on Wednesday. Stefan Jagel (left) criticized the obviously necessary double registration and asked why. Health officer Zurek explained that the data is stored in the Bavarian vaccination portal – but that it is not possible there to assign those willing to vaccinate to an individual vaccination center. That is why it happens on wir-impfen-muenchen.de. However, according to Zurek, it is also possible to register there alone. Regarding the accessibility of the site, she said that the server capacities are currently being “readjusted” and that she hopes that everything will run smoothly soon.
Regarding the vaccine for children, Elisabeth Waldeck from the health department said it was practically the same drug as the one for adults, only in a lower dose. However, in order to ensure that the syringes can be drawn up properly, the manufacturer Biontech produced special “children’s bottles”, so to speak, in greater dilution: “One third dose, same volume.”
The rest of the virtual meeting mainly revolved around the spread of the new Omikron variant and the measures against it. There are currently 26 suspected cases and one confirmed case in Munich. The procedure when entering from a virus variant area – currently southern Africa – was explained by Beatrix Zurek: At the airport, every person entering the country is subjected to a so-called vPCR test, which Omikron can prove. If the test is negative, the passenger must still be in quarantine at home for 14 days – this also applies to those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered. On the fifth and on the 13th day, tests are carried out again, and the passenger is only released from quarantine if both tests are negative.
In principle, the same applies to positive tests – however, the infected are not allowed to go home, but are accommodated in a hotel at the airport for the duration of the quarantine. In order to obtain information about the spread of Omikron in the city, 30 percent of all positive tests are also subjected to a vPCR test.