pandemic
First corona vaccinations with Novavax
The first vaccination centers start with the Novavax vaccinations. Photo: Guido Kirchner/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The time has finally come: the Novavax vaccine is available in Germany. Does this give new impetus to the vaccination campaign?
The first doses of Novavax’s new corona vaccine were administered in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland on Saturday. In the vaccination center in Saarbrücken, 70 appointments were made for the first day, as Daniel Schappert from the Saarbrücken regional association said.
According to him, 50 vaccinations were given by the afternoon. Four vaccination centers in Saarland took part in the vaccination with Novavax on Saturday. It was estimated that around 250 appointments for initial vaccinations had been made.
In Hamburg, the health authority announced that Novavax would be injected immediately with the municipal vaccination offers in the city – by appointment online or as part of the open vaccination campaigns. Initially, around 33,000 vaccine doses would be available. In Schleswig-Holstein, vaccinations without prior registration were also possible in the vaccination centers in Kiel, Lübeck, Neumünster, Itzehoe and Prisdorf on Saturday, according to the Ministry of Health. In Prisdof, however, the demand for the Novavax product was very manageable, according to a dpa photographer.
New impetus for the vaccination campaign?
The first deliveries of the preparation arrived on Thursday at the Bundeswehr in Quakenbrück, Lower Saxony, and delivery to the federal states began on Friday. The health ministers of the federal states had spoken out in favor of initially offering the vaccine primarily to unvaccinated health care workers. In the industry, facility-related vaccination will take effect from March 15th.
The red-green-yellow federal government hopes that the vaccine from the US manufacturer Novavax will give impetus to the vaccination campaign in Germany. The drug was approved as the fifth corona vaccine in the EU – for people aged 18 and over. Two doses are injected about three weeks apart. It is a protein vaccine – so it is based on a different technology than the mRNA corona preparations from Pfizer and Moderna, which have been mostly used so far, and which some people have concerns about.