So that Germany has enough corona vaccination doses by the end of this year to give all those willing to vaccinate booster vaccinations, the federal government has postponed vaccine donations to poorer countries.

The managing Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Wednesday at an event of the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “We even pushed some of our COVAX donations, i.e. international donations with BioNTech, from December into January and February in order to get enough for these things in Germany To have a vaccine, ”said the CDU politician.

Johannes Ritter

Correspondent for politics and business in Switzerland.

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This statement should cause horror at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva.

She has long criticized that vaccines are being distributed unfairly.

The WHO calculates that the low-income countries have only received 0.4 percent of all vaccine doses so far.

There is no point in giving healthy adults booster vaccinations or vaccinating children when health workers, the elderly and other high-risk groups around the world are still waiting for their first dose, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a recent press conference.

“Every day six times more booster vaccinations are given around the world than initial vaccinations in low-income countries. This is a scandal that needs to be ended now. ”Ghebreyesus said that an additional 550 million doses would be needed to meet WHO’s goal of vaccinating 40 percent of the population of all countries by the end of this year. That corresponds to the production of about ten days. In the United States, too, a decision is expected in the coming days to require all adults to have booster vaccinations.

Almost 500 million doses have so far been delivered to 144 countries through the international COVAX initiative, which aims to ensure fair access to vaccines.

According to the WHO, this is far too little.

Michael Ryan, head of the WHO emergency programs, points a finger at the rich countries that have not kept their promises: "Of the amount of vaccine that the richer countries have promised in the past six months, only 15 percent have been delivered," said Ryan TIME Online.