Status: 09/18/2022 11:28 am
Vaccines adapted to the omicron variant BA.1 have been available for a few days. Demand has been subdued so far – probably also because the delivery of the next vaccine is imminent.
Even if the vaccination center in Alzey, Rhineland-Palatinate, is busier again – the demand for the new vaccines is still manageable: “We currently have 80 to 100 vaccinations a day,” says Norbert Günther, the vaccination coordinator responsible. “We can do a lot more – if you consider that a year ago we had 800 vaccinations a day.”
About two weeks ago, the European Medicines Agency approved new booster vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, which are adapted to the omicron subvariant BA.1. The first vaccinations with the new vaccine have been available for a few days. The federal government has ordered 14 million cans of it; they should be delivered by the manufacturers by the end of the current week.
Slow start to the new vaccination campaign
But so far the start of the new vaccination campaign has been cautious. “In the few days that we were vaccinating BA.1, we did not experience a major jump in demand,” says Jens Lassen, Deputy Chairman of the Schleswig-Holstein General Practitioners’ Association.
The Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance Physician Care in Germany (Zi) has nationwide figures on orders. According to this, contract doctors have so far ordered around 2.8 million doses of BA.1 vaccine. The demand from patients is “currently rather low because of the millions of infections from the last corona wave,” the central institute said on request. “We will have to see how it is possible to further activate the vaccination willingness of risk patients in the next few weeks and gradually reduce the general vaccination uncertainty. In addition, it is still quite early for a vaccination at the beginning of September, which should protect until spring.”
In addition to the reasons mentioned, there is another significant one: As early as next week Germany is to receive deliveries of another vaccine adapted to Omikron from BioNTech/Pfizer: This is based on the sub-line BA.4/BA.5, which currently dominates the infection process in Germany. BA.1 has not played a role in this country for a long time.
Two new types of vaccine
So there are two new types of vaccines that are available – one more up-to-date than the other: “This development is a moral disaster,” says Christoph Lembens, family doctor in Mainz. “A patient will hardly want to take the older vaccine. Should we then throw the old one away?”
Norbert Günther from the Alzeyer Vaccination Center sees similar problems as the family doctor: “A few days ago we sent people away and referred them to the BA.1 vaccine. Now we are again in the dilemma that the next vaccine will be coming soon. Should Are people still waiting because of that? I have to think about what I’m going to say.”
Carsten Watzl, Secretary General of the German Society for Immunology, advises high-risk patients and people who are older than 60 years of age not to wait for the BA.4/BA.5 vaccine, but to be boosted now with the available BA1 vaccine. There is no data on the question of which of the two new vaccines is better, says Watzl in an interview with the dpa news agency. In experiments with animals, the respective results were similar, but there were no direct comparisons. “In this respect, it is open to me how much advantage the vaccine adapted to BA.4/BA.5 really brings.” According to the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, even if the BA.4/BA.5 vaccine is available, doctors should be able to continue to order the BA.1 vaccines until they are used up.
Concern about possible destruction of vaccine doses
The question remains whether they will do so: In any case, family doctor Lembens fears that large quantities of this vaccine will have to be destroyed because the doctors will not call it up or the patients will refuse it. The Federal Ministry of Health states: “Due to the current vaccination campaign, it is not possible to predict how many vaccine doses will expire in the next few months and depends on the willingness of the population to be vaccinated.” The vaccines adapted to the subvariants are generally stable for 12 months.
As a spokesman for the Ministry of Health recently said, it is also unclear which variant will prevail in winter – possibly one for which the BA.1 vaccine is very suitable.
“High demand pressure” expected for BA.4/BA-5 vaccine
Family doctor Lembens expects “high demand pressure” at least for the BA.4/BA-5 vaccine. Norbert Günther, head of the vaccination center in Alzey, also expects interest in the Omicron boosters to continue to grow, by October 1st at the latest. Then it is considered to be fully vaccinated if you can show at least two vaccinations and one infection or three vaccinations.