Two curves show the progress of the German vaccination campaign with relentless clarity.

Over time, the upper line indicates the number of first vaccinations given, the lower one shows the number of full vaccinations against the coronavirus.

You can see immediately that the campaign is losing power: the two curves are getting closer and closer to each other.

On average, only around 90,000 people nationwide are vaccinated against Corona every day.

There are a good 240,000 people who receive a second vaccination at the same time.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in politics.

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According to a new survey of general practitioners, the declining interest in vaccination means that many units of the available corona vaccines will soon have to be disposed of because the expiration date is being reached.

As the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance reported on Tuesday, this could affect around 4.5 percent of all injection vials - so-called vials - delivered to doctors' surgeries by the end of August.

3.2 million cans could end up in the hazardous waste

This corresponds to around 3.2 million cans that could end up in the hazardous waste. The medical professionals estimate that between 15 and 20 percent of the stored vector vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson will have to be thrown away. With BioNTech's mRNA vaccine, the loss in the doctor's office could be two to three percent. Specifically, around 1.1 million cans of AstraZeneca, almost 400,000 cans of Johnson & Johnson and around 1.7 million units of BioNTech would be affected. Around 4,500 doctors took part in the survey, which was carried out between early and mid-August.

When asked about the possible reasons for the low level of interest in the vaccination, the doctors first and foremost mentioned doubts about the safety of the vaccine in the population. "The vector vaccines in particular are now considered to be barely vaccinable," said the chairman of the institute, Dominik von Stillfried. “These are now only ordered in small quantities by very few practices.” Ethically speaking, it is therefore imperative to collect unneeded vials for international vaccine donations before they become unusable.

The Federal Ministry of Health under Jens Spahn (CDU) is called upon to "quickly create legal and organizational framework conditions that can be easily implemented by practices," said von Stillfried.

It remains to be seen whether, following the latest recommendation from the Standing Vaccination Commission, more parents will decide to have their 12 to 17 year old children vaccinated.

The commission recently recommended vaccination for everyone in this age group.

Doctors' practices not "dropped out" of the vaccination campaign

In North Rhine-Westphalia, interest in vaccinations recently increased slightly again.

Within a week, the number of people vaccinated at least once rose by a good 183,000, as a comparison of the figures published by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Wednesday with those a week ago shows.

Before that, there were only just under 139,000 people in a Wednesday comparison.

The RKI has meanwhile contradicted the representation of the newspaper Welt am Sonntag that many medical practices had "dropped out" of the vaccination campaign.

According to figures from the RKI, which the newspaper reported on and which are also available to the FAZ, at the beginning of August only 29,318 medical practices nationwide were vaccinated against corona.

Since the start of vaccinations, a total of 52,685 practices have reported that they have vaccinated.

"This evaluation cannot show whether practices are completely disappearing from the vaccination campaign," said a spokeswoman for the RKI.

It is noticeable that the number of reporting practices fell noticeably in calendar week 29 and then continued to decline.

This coincides with the beginning of the summer vacation in many federal states.

The state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has meanwhile suspended its plans to purchase the Russian vaccine Sputnik.

Instead of the cabinet, the group of state secretaries dealt with the issue.

In a special meeting on Monday they agreed to put the process "dormant" so that no further costs arise.

According to the Ministry of Health in Schwerin, 21,500 euros have so far flowed to a law firm that worked on behalf of the state.