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“Brandenburg vaccinates!” Is emblazoned on the vaccination website of the Brandenburg Ministry of Health.
However, the damper follows only one line further: “Due to the small amount of vaccine, no new vaccination dates can temporarily be given for the corona vaccination in the state of Brandenburg.
All dates are currently fully booked, ”they say.
So it should actually be “Brandenburg brakes”.
From a mathematical point of view, the problem is simple - and it was also foreseeable: According to the State Ministry of Health, around 280,000 people belong to the population group that should be vaccinated first.
Until mid-February, however, 168,000 vaccine doses from the manufacturers Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna had been planned.
Since you have to be vaccinated twice, that's enough for a maximum of 84,000 people.
In theory.
In practice, the lion's share of the vaccine comes with 156,000 doses from Biontech / Pfizer - but there are delivery problems there.
The country expects about a quarter less vaccine.
The promised vaccines are only sufficient for 64,000 people.
Brandenburg has now reached exactly this limit, on Tuesday the Ministry of Health reported 63,024 vaccinations - of which only 1,145 people received the second dose.
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If Brandenburg were to continue vaccinating, the state runs the risk that not all people will get their second vaccination in time.
This explains the emergency braking that the Brandenburg government put down - 9,000 people were canceled the vaccination appointment that had already been promised.
A spokesman for the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in Brandenburg, which operates the vaccination centers, said on request that overall, one does not believe that the willingness to vaccinate is falling due to the refusals.
20,000 vaccination appointments are planned in all eleven vaccination centers by mid-February.
How many of them relate to initial appointments remained open.
When it comes to vaccinations, Brandenburg is doing well
Those responsible find themselves in a bind.
Nobody wants to be accused that the vaccination rate is not fast enough.
And Brandenburg is doing comparatively well: With a vaccinated share of 2.45 percent of the population, the state ranks fourth in a Germany-wide comparison of vaccination rates as of Tuesday.
Only Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (3.18), Rhineland-Palatinate (3.17) and Schleswig-Holstein (2.95) perform better.
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However, speed implies that all theoretically available vaccination doses are also planned at the same time.
If this does not come then, the plan will falter.
This doesn't just happen in Brandenburg, after all, the vaccine is procured through the federal government.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, appointments had to be postponed.
In addition, all available dates until mid-February have been taken for two weeks.
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The local CDU state chairwoman Julia Klöckner accused the traffic light government made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP last Saturday for having "gambled away".
The government led by Malu Dreyer (SPD) assures, however, that enough vaccine has been kept for the second vaccinations.
Last week, Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) made it clear that people in Brandenburg also feared a bottleneck: “The federal government has to deliver.
We need reliability.
I can open as many vaccination centers as I want here.
If the vaccine is not there, none of this is of any use, ”he said in the WELT interview.
His Ministry of Health had already announced days before that only a few vaccination appointments could be made.
It is all the more surprising that the country did not stop the ongoing run on the appointment hotline.
Brandenburger describe how they tried to make an appointment last weekend - without success.
Because the Brandenburg Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians announced on Friday that appointments could be made for some vaccination centers again from Sunday.
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The health policy spokesman for the left parliamentary group in the state parliament, Ronny Kretschmer, tried in vain, as he describes in a phone call.
He tried to make an appointment for his grandmother at the weekend.
“I tried 60 times on Sunday and 20 times on Tuesday.
When I got through there was an announcement that all appointments were taken, ”he says.
He also received messages from hospitals in which appointments that had already been promised had been postponed.
In response to a WELT request, the Brandenburg-based clinic company GLG announced that the second vaccination appointments were pushed forward by two weeks in three out of five hospitals - to mid-February instead of the beginning of February.
Health politician Kretschmer warns against extending the period between the first and second vaccination.
“I think that's a dangerous path.” The Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) recommends a minimum interval between the two vaccinations of 21 days for the Biontech and 28 days for the Moderna vaccine.
A duration of 42 days should therefore not be exceeded.
This theoretically leaves a buffer until the beginning of March for people who will be vaccinated these days.
However, it should not be taken too loosely: "It is uncertain to what extent the vaccination effectiveness after a dose is sufficient to protect the high-risk groups in old age," warns the Stiko in its reasoning.
How things will continue in Brandenburg is unclear.
The State Ministry of Health did not answer a corresponding WELT request.
Health Minister Ursula Nonnemacher (Greens) opened a seventh vaccination center on Tuesday despite the problems.
"It is an important sign that despite the shortage of vaccines, we are opening vaccination centers as planned in all parts of the country," she said.
In fact, the breakdown in Brandenburg shows how important communication is.
The fact that problems are less noticeable elsewhere is likely to be primarily due to the different vaccination procedures in the countries.
In Schleswig-Holstein, for example, appointments are only made via the hotline for those who do not fall into the category of over 80s.
Here, too, there are now no more appointments, as the country reports online.
However, if you are older than 80 and want to come to the vaccination center, you have to wait for a letter, which will only be sent from February 1st.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, too, people find out by letter when it is their turn.
The advantage: Where there is no hotline, it cannot be overloaded, as happened in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example.
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This may protect against irritation and frustration.
But it does not solve the basic problem of vaccine shortages.
That is likely to get worse.
The third vaccine manufacturer, Astra Zeneca, which is about to be approved in the EU, will probably not meet the delivery schedule either.
On Friday, the company announced that it would deliver only half as much vaccine as promised to the EU by the end of March.
It would therefore be important to specify the groups to be prioritized more precisely.
Otherwise there will be a distribution battle on hold.
Or the alphabet decides who goes first.
Just like with the over 80-year-olds in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
"Almost all of our vaccine used in old people's homes"
North Rhine-Westphalia's Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann speaks of a successful vaccination start in his state.
Due to delivery bottlenecks, however, a break in initial vaccinations was initiated until the weekend, according to Laumann.
Source: WORLD