Germany’s fridges are filled with British COVID shots. But there’s a problem: 80 percent of the 735,000 doses delivered to Germany so far have not been used. The vaccine is being described in the German press as a ‘shelf warmer’. There are even reports of people missing appointments at vaccination centers if they have been notified that they will receive the AstraZeneca product.
While this is alarming, a lukewarm reaction to the vaccine might not come as a surprise. The ‘Oxford’ vaccine’s reputation has been repeatedly undermined by reports about its efficacy. A decision in Germany not to use the vaccine for over 65-year-olds, despite the European Medicines Agency having approved it to be given to all adults, has hardly helped.
Now, German politicians — fearful of the ‘third wave’ of COVID-19, which Angela Merkel warned about last night — are pleading with people to go and take the shot. Some local administrations are even taking away the freedom of choice, meaning that those who are scheduled to be vaccinated can no longer deny a certain product.
Michael Muller, the mayor of Berlin, has threatened to send people to the back of the vaccination line if they refuse the shot and ask for the more popular Pfizer vaccine.
‘I won’t allow tens of thousands of doses to lie around on our shelves while millions of people across the country are waiting to be immunized,’ he told the city’s Tagesspiegel newspaper. ‘Those who don’t want the vaccine have missed their chance.’
But delaying the vaccination of those who refuse a particular shot will do little to help speed up the vaccine rollout.
If some of the blame for this lies with German leaders, could AstraZeneca itself do more to help change the image of its vaccine in the minds of the German public? The company’s vice president for Germany, Klaus Hinterding, agreed to an interview with business newspaper Wirtschaftswoche, in which he pointed at new positive data coming out of Scotland suggesting that the first dose of the vaccine can already reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 by 94 percent.
But instead of appearing in media outlets with limited audiences, AstraZeneca might have to launch a full-throttle PR campaign in Germany to undo the damage of the unfair early briefings made against the vaccine.
Meanwhile, millions of Germans are yet to be vaccinated. Four percent of Germans have received at least one dose. But this pales in comparison to Britain, which has administered jabs to 27 percent of its population.
In the fight against COVID-19, Germany’s government could come to regret its early criticism of a vaccine which is proving to be an effective weapon.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
