Germany has secured enough corona vaccine for refreshments and for the upcoming mandatory vaccination.

In the next three weeks, everyone “capable of booster” could be offered the third injection, according to the Federal Ministry of Health under Karl Lauterbach (SPD).

This is possible not least because the federal government has just bought five million mRNA doses from the manufacturer Biontech from an EU quota for Romania, which Bucharest did not want to buy.

These quantities would be available from January 24th.

Lauterbach's house wants to meet the request of the federal states to keep the vaccination centers open until the end of the year and to continue to finance them from Berlin.

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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According to Lauterbach, the federal government's corona vaccination target by the end of January is still in danger. The SPD politician told the news portal The Pioneer: "It will be very difficult, that is clear." According to the plans of the traffic light coalition, 80 percent of people in Germany should be vaccinated at least once by the end of January. By Wednesday morning, 74.8 percent - or 62.2 million people - had received at least one dose of vaccine.

The compulsory vaccination planned for spring should not fail due to a lack of vaccines. It is said that sufficient doses of mRNA vaccines have been ordered or optioned to vaccinate every German citizen three more times, a total of more than 240 million units. It was recently announced that a special Biontech vaccine against the Omikron variant could be available from March onwards. Apparently it is assumed that this mutation will then continue to rampant. It still seems unclear whether the recently approved vaccine from the American manufacturer Novavax will actually be delivered for the first time at the end of January. Germany initially ordered four million cans of it. Since the agent works differently than the mRNA method, which is unpopular with vaccine opponents, there are hopes that Novavax will also reach skeptics.

Relief for third-party vaccinations

Lauterbach had already announced in his first speech in the Bundestag as minister that boosting was of central importance to him.

Under his predecessor, Jens Spahn (CDU), this had started later than in other countries, and now they want to catch up.

This is not only done by the vaccination centers and the procurement of drugs, but also by targeted incentives.

From next week on, life will be a little easier for people who have received a booster vaccination against Covid-19.

So far, the booster has not played a role in the status compared to those who have been given a primary vaccination; two-fold and three-fold vaccines were treated equally.

That will change after Lauterbach's proposals, which the Prime Minister and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) followed on Friday.

On the one hand, third-party vaccinations will be exempt from test evidence in future where the 2-G-Plus rule applies.

This makes it easier to spontaneously go to a restaurant, café or concert.

On the other hand, boosters do not have to be quarantined if they have had close contact with someone infected with Omicron.

Berlin sees these “privileges” as a strong incentive to get a third shot.

That still affects around 30 million people.