Merkel urges citizens to persevere despite lockdown, vaccine woes

Berlin (dpa) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday urged citizens to persevere despite the ongoing lockdown and vaccine delivery difficulties in a televised interview with public broadcaster ARD.

“If we persevere for another while, it will get better,” Merkel said.

She said there was now a lowered incidence rate of 100 new infections per 100,000 people in one week.

“That is a good achievement. We were not there for a long time. But we still don’t have control over the virus through the health ministries,” Merkel said.

Merkel also defended Germany’s vaccination strategy, saying it had to be dynamic and adapt to the manufacturers’ possibilities.

“We can’t make a rigid vaccination plan,” she said.

Merkel however reiterated her pledge to offer a vaccine to every citizen by the end of summer.

She also said citizens could expect an easing of measures before everyone was vaccinated, but urged everyone to stick to distance rules and be careful.

Merkel also said she would be open to Germany using the Russian Sputnik V vaccine on the day interim results of a late-stage phase 3 trial were published saying it was 91.6-per-cent effective.

Every vaccine is welcome in the European Union, but the Russian vaccine will only be approved if it submits the necessary data to the responsible EU authority, the EMA, the chancellor said.

Merkel said that any party trying to obtain approval with the necessary data would be “warmly welcome” in the EU, adding that she had “talked to the Russian President [Vladimir Putin] about this.”

“Today we read good data, including on the Russian vaccine,” said Merkel, referring to the results published on Tuesday in the medical journal The Lancet.

Merkel, who is set to retire from politics following September elections, has held onto her popularity in opinion polls despite consistently pushing for tough lockdown measures.

However, the chancellor’s record on handling the crisis appears mixed as her government has come under pressure in recent weeks to explain the sluggish pace of vaccinations in the country.