German minister piles pressure on EU regulator to approve vaccine

Berlin (dpa) – German Health Minister Jens Spahn has his eye on an earlier date than planned for EU member states to get their hands on the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, piling further pressure on the bloc’s regulator to authorize its roll-out.

The European Union could give the green light as early as December 23, Spahn told reporters on Berlin on Tuesday, citing information in the media.

This is “good news for the European Union,” said Spahn, who is hoping to launch vaccinations in his country before the end of the year.

However, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) refused to confirm the December 23 date. A spokeswoman told dpa that the agency is sticking to its timeline of delivering a decision by December 29 at the latest.

Britain and the United States have already started administering the jab after their regulators gave the go-ahead following expedited assessments.

In an interview with the ZDF public broadcaster on Monday, Spahn said he is aiming to have around 60 per cent of Germany’s population vaccinated against the coronavirus by the end of summer 2021.

That would be at the lower end of the World Health Organization’s recommended coverage rate of 60-70 per cent.

Germany is in the process of setting up hundreds of vaccination centres across the country, many of them in repurposed sports stadiums and conference halls.

On Monday, Eugen Brysch of the German Foundation for Patient Protection told lawmakers in Berlin that questions remained on how to reach vulnerable groups.

“We are now in the final phase of constructing the vaccination centres but on the issue of prioritizing we are still at the very beginning,” he said.

The German government has issued guidelines largely in line with other countries, under which the elderly and front-line health workers are to be first in line for inoculation.

Germany is tightening its lockdown measures nationwide from Wednesday following a weekend agreement between Chancellor Angela Merkel and the 16 state premiers.

A partial lockdown launched in early November failed to break a second wave of infections. Now, all but essential shops are to close and schoolchildren are to largely return to remote learning.

People can still meet with members of one other household, although gatherings are limited to a maximum of five.

That rule is to be softened from December 24-26 to allow close families to celebrate Christmas in small groups together.

Merkel lamented the fact that some people are determined to poke holes in the rules in a bid to get around them, calling such behaviour “devastating.”

“The second waves of pandemics are often the most dangerous,” Merkel warned students during an online forum with the chancellor.

On Tuesday, the Robert Koch Institute for disease control reported another 500 deaths – the third highest daily toll seen in the country so far – making for a total of 22,475.

Over 1.3 million cases of infection have been confirmed in Germany.

The so-called seven-day incidence provided a glimmer of hope, falling on Tuesday for the first time in over two weeks.

The RKI reported that 173.7 people had caught the virus per 100,000 residents over a seven-day period, down slightly from 176.4 the previous day.

The goal is to bring that number down to below 50, so that overwhelmed health authorities can resume tracking chains of infection.

The institute noted that no data was sent on Monday from the eastern state of Saxony, one of Germany’s worst-affected regions, meaning that the data could be skewed somewhat.