To be fair there are some problems with the overall campaign here.
There isn't one campaign. There are effetively three campaigns, and they're sorta competing with each other
a) on-site vaccination teams - provided for senior citizen homes (residents and staff) and hospital staff.
-> Campaign a) is basically finished now. They were at around 90-100% done depending on state in early February. In many states the mobile teams from this campaign transitioned into a roving campaign where e.g. convention centers are used to set up a vaccination center temporarily.
Hospitals are also no longer provided vaccines for their staff, which are now supposed to use campaign b) and are thus suspect to external auditing of their prioritizaion. While there were some protests from hospitals about that, their reasonings were not exactly endearing them to the public ("we still have to vaccinate the med students interning here") ... especially when it got out that some places had been vaccinating e.g. administrative staff and board members already.
b) central vaccination centers - pretty much one per county or city (about 400 total), vaccinating people who are mobile by appointment.
-> Campaign b) is decentralized, which leads to some problems. In some places "leftover" vaccine has been used to vaccinate "volunteers" - which in quite a number of cases were employees or politicians of that county despite this being nominally illegal queue-jumping. In addition many senior citizens living at home are somewhat overwhelmed with the appointment booking process (in most cases through websites or call centers).
c) vaccination at local doctors - started last week, instantly doubled the daily vaccination rate. Precondition for this campaign was that the EMA ruled it possible to store Biontech vaccine in normal refrigerators for two weeks, which they only did a short while ago.
-> Campaign c) is problematic in that there is virtually no oversight and in that there are business interests involved. Which means lobbyists galore. Lobby organizations for doctors have already called this week to basically end campaign b), close all vaccination centers and hand the vaccine over to them.
To my knowledge France similarly runs campaigns a) and b), with vaccination centers even more decentralized (1300 total). There are plans for a c)-style campaign later in the year. Unlike in e.g. the US hospitals or other central healthcare centers are not actively involved in the vaccination campaign here at all (Germany and France).
Most major companies in Germany are preparing the fourth step, campaign d) now - vaccinations at the workplace by doctors hired by these companies. Won't happen until we scrap the priority list laws.
There isn't one campaign. There are effetively three campaigns, and they're sorta competing with each other
a) on-site vaccination teams - provided for senior citizen homes (residents and staff) and hospital staff.
-> Campaign a) is basically finished now. They were at around 90-100% done depending on state in early February. In many states the mobile teams from this campaign transitioned into a roving campaign where e.g. convention centers are used to set up a vaccination center temporarily.
Hospitals are also no longer provided vaccines for their staff, which are now supposed to use campaign b) and are thus suspect to external auditing of their prioritizaion. While there were some protests from hospitals about that, their reasonings were not exactly endearing them to the public ("we still have to vaccinate the med students interning here") ... especially when it got out that some places had been vaccinating e.g. administrative staff and board members already.
b) central vaccination centers - pretty much one per county or city (about 400 total), vaccinating people who are mobile by appointment.
-> Campaign b) is decentralized, which leads to some problems. In some places "leftover" vaccine has been used to vaccinate "volunteers" - which in quite a number of cases were employees or politicians of that county despite this being nominally illegal queue-jumping. In addition many senior citizens living at home are somewhat overwhelmed with the appointment booking process (in most cases through websites or call centers).
c) vaccination at local doctors - started last week, instantly doubled the daily vaccination rate. Precondition for this campaign was that the EMA ruled it possible to store Biontech vaccine in normal refrigerators for two weeks, which they only did a short while ago.
-> Campaign c) is problematic in that there is virtually no oversight and in that there are business interests involved. Which means lobbyists galore. Lobby organizations for doctors have already called this week to basically end campaign b), close all vaccination centers and hand the vaccine over to them.
To my knowledge France similarly runs campaigns a) and b), with vaccination centers even more decentralized (1300 total). There are plans for a c)-style campaign later in the year. Unlike in e.g. the US hospitals or other central healthcare centers are not actively involved in the vaccination campaign here at all (Germany and France).
Most major companies in Germany are preparing the fourth step, campaign d) now - vaccinations at the workplace by doctors hired by these companies. Won't happen until we scrap the priority list laws.
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