Germany searches for ways to boost flagging vaccination campaign
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Germany is using both a carrot and a stick to encourage more people to get Covid-19 vaccinations after its immunisation campaign fell behind other European countries, raising fears about a “fourth wave” of infections.
The government on Monday launched a “vaccination week”, offering free jabs to people without appointments in more than 700 public places, including a zoo in Rostock, an ice hockey stadium in Cologne and an airport in Berlin.
“There are still those who actually have nothing against the vaccination, who maybe even had an appointment before, they missed it and they simply didn’t make a new one,” Jens Spahn, the German health minister, said in a radio interview.
While urging people to take advantage of the chance to get a jab in a nearby location, Spahn suggested the government could also make life tougher for unvaccinated people.
Germany’s vaccination rate has stagnated in recent weeks with close to 62 per cent of its population fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.
That is slightly ahead of the EU average but below the UK, France and Italy. In some countries, more than 70 per cent of the population have been fully vaccinated, including Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Denmark.
Several regions, including North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg, have said they will stop compensating unvaccinated workers for lost income when they have to quarantine after testing positive for coronavirus or returning from a high-risk area.
This change is expected to be rolled out nationally by the government, which is planning to start charging for all Covid-19 tests from next month.
Some regional governments, such as Hamburg, are also stepping up pressure on people to get jabbed by restricting access to indoor public spaces only to those who have been vaccinated, or recovered from the virus — excluding those with a recent negative test.
“We need to motivate people to get vaccinated,” said Gernot Marx, chair of the German interdisciplinary association for intensive care and emergency medicine, after the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care rose from 350 at the start of August to 1,500 this week.
“When we get towards 75 per cent of people fully vaccinated, that will make a huge difference,” said Marx, adding that more than half of German Covid-19 patients in intensive care were aged under 60. “We are concerned about the recent increase in patients, and if it continues to increase it will be very difficult by the winter.”
The debate over how to speed up vaccinations spilled over into the German election campaign on Sunday when Annalena Baerbock, the Green party’s candidate for chancellor, said she supported compulsory jabs for certain professions, such as medical workers — a step recently taken in France.
But Armin Laschet, the candidate of the centre-right CDU/CSU, said he was against such a move and trusted people to decide for themselves.
A recent survey by research institute Infas found that only 10 per cent of unvaccinated Germans were opposed to getting the jab in principle.
The government last week said it aimed to deliver another 5m vaccinations this year to increase the proportion of people aged over 60 who are fully vaccinated to 90 per cent and bring the proportion of people aged 12 to 59 up to 75 per cent.
“It has never been easier to get a vaccination,” Dilek Kalayci, Berlin’s health minister, suggested offering a voucher for a free doner kebab to people who get jabbed. “Autumn is here at the door, we are in the fourth wave and we have vaccination rates that are actually insufficient to avoid the worst,” she told RTL.