After the action week: Spahn: Achieve significantly higher vaccination rates in southeast Germany

Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn sees a need to catch up due to clear regional differences in vaccination rates in Germany.

"In the north-west we are almost there, in the south-east we should achieve significantly higher rates," wrote the CDU politician on Twitter on Saturday.

According to his information, 62.9 percent of citizens in Germany (52.3 million people) have full vaccination protection, 67.1 percent (55.8 million) received at least one vaccination.

RKI data show that significantly more people are actually vaccinated against Corona in the northwest than in the southeast.

Bremen is the front runner: 77.7 percent of citizens have been vaccinated once and 73.3 percent have full protection (as of Saturday, 10:31 a.m.).

In Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, too, more than 70 percent of the residents received at least one corona vaccination.

In eastern Germany, the vaccination rates are still mostly significantly lower than in the west.

In Saxony, for example, so far only 56.9 percent have received a first and 53.6 a second spade.

In Thuringia, too, the vaccination rate is still below 60 percent.

But Bavaria (63.8 percent first vaccinations) and Baden-Württemberg (64.3 percent) are still far behind the vaccination pioneer federal states.

Seven-day incidence continues to decline

After the week of action for corona vaccinations, the City Council called for creative measures to be continued.

“Opportunity makes vaccinations.

It is all the more important that these effective offers are also available after the end of the vaccination centers on October 1, 2021, ”said Städtetag general manager Helmut Dedy to the editorial network Germany.

Meanwhile, the seven-day incidence fell for the fifth day in a row.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week on Saturday morning as 72.0.

For comparison: the previous day the value was 74.4, a week ago it was 82.8.

The health authorities in Germany reported 8901 new corona infections to the RKI within one day.

This is evident from the figures that reflect the status of the RKI dashboard at 4:40 a.m.

A week ago, the value was 11,214 infections.

"What we are currently seeing is, in my opinion, a breather, not much more," Lauterbach told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper.

"I assume that the number of cases will rise again at the moment when people's lives increasingly take place indoors."

Physicist Viola Priesemann from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization made a similar statement.

The slightly falling numbers "didn't mean at all that we can't get a big wave in autumn," she told the newspapers of the Funke media group.

The chairwoman of the Education and Science Union (GEW), Maike Finnern, is also worried about the autumn.

"Whole classes are already in quarantine," she told Business Insider magazine.

Politicians must do everything to ensure “that we don't get a winter like last year”.

At the moment, the measures for schools are "made too hesitant".

End of all corona restrictions required by October 30th

It needs a mix of measures from nationwide PCR tests, air filters in schools and more staff, said Finnern.

Otherwise, face-to-face teaching cannot be maintained.

In contrast, the head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), Andreas Gassen, called for an early end to the corona containment measures.

He spoke out in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung for the end of all restrictions on October 30th as an incentive to vaccinate.

From Sunday on, the federal government will remove Cyprus and the Algarve from the list of Corona high-risk areas.

This means that Portugal, which is also popular with holidaymakers, disappears completely from this category.

Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has already announced a safe ski season. If the corona situation worsens, only those who have been vaccinated will have access to après-ski bars, he said in an interview with the Funke media group. Both 70 percent of the over twelve year olds in Austria and the vast majority of tourists are vaccinated. The Austrian party and ski resort Ischgl became a Corona hotspot last year. In Vienna, a compensation process is currently being negotiated against the state of Austria.