It is intended to make traveling within Europe easier and also opens many doors beyond: the digital vaccination certificate.

Since Monday, almost 22 million Germans who have already been vaccinated twice have been able to get a corresponding certificate free of charge from a pharmacy, which is stored in a QR code for the smartphone.

The interest is obviously great: Pharmacists' associations report that some of the servers were overloaded, and queues are said to have formed in isolated cases.

More than 400,000 vaccination certificates had been issued by Monday afternoon alone.

Britta Beeger

Editor in business.

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    The remuneration of 18 euros that the pharmacies receive for each digital certificate, however, has been heavily criticized by doctors and from the opposition - especially since the Federal Audit Office only last week with a view to the issue of free Corona protective masks in winter “a clear one Overcompensation ”in favor of the pharmacies.

    Ulrich Weigeldt, Chairman of the German Association of General Practitioners, sees the proportionality in the case of vaccination certificates not guaranteed in two respects.

    Spahn: Take into account the expenses for the pharmacies

    On the one hand, doctors would get 20 euros for the vaccination itself, including information and advice, that is only slightly more. "The medical service itself is apparently currently far less important than the effort to initiate projects quickly," he told the FAZ. On the other hand, Weigeldt complains that doctors only receive six euros and even only two euros for the subsequent creation of vaccination records for their own patients, if you use your practice management system for this. This difference is "not explainable" because the effort is comparable. However, when it comes to patients who have not been vaccinated in their own practice, the doctors also get 18 euros.

    Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) defends the amount of the remuneration with the expense for the pharmacies, for example because they have to compare vaccination and identity cards and collect a lot of data. In addition, the price was chosen so that as many of the 19,000 or so pharmacies as possible participate. According to the association, around 13,000 of them are currently participating, i.e. around two thirds. A spokesman for the Federal Association of German Pharmacists' Associations also described the effort as considerable, "also and precisely because the desire in the population is so strong that this service should be available as quickly as possible". The remuneration set by the legislator is therefore "appropriate".

    How it actually comes about has not yet been discussed in detail by Spahn. The FDP politician Andrew Ullmann, chairman of his parliamentary group in the Bundestag's health committee, therefore criticizes a lack of transparency. “The composition of the remuneration is a mystery to me. I can't understand it in the amount. ”The ministry must disclose the basis of the calculation, he demands.

    The Green health politician Janosch Dahmen made a similar statement: The Federal Ministry of Health “did not learn any lessons from the debacle of overpriced rapid tests and protective masks,” he said. The digital activation of the vaccination certificate takes a few minutes and is now financially almost the same as a corona vaccination. Here the ministry lacks the necessary sense of proportion. It enables pharmacies to have “another lucrative business. Ultimately, the costs are borne by the citizens. ”According to the Vaccination Ordinance, these are initially accounted for via the health fund's liquidity reserve and then reimbursed by the federal government. The proof itself is free of charge for vaccinated persons.