The Novavax vaccine has been available in Germany for a few days. He is to drive the vaccination campaign forward. But already in the first few days, the prioritization falls in some places.
Berlin – Lack of vaccination readiness and canceled prioritization: The start of vaccination with the Novavax* vaccine was slow in many federal states. In Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine were administered on Saturday (February 26th). Other federal states followed on Monday, Bavaria wants to start on Wednesday. But the campaign is apparently not going as hoped.
Novavax: restrained start of the corona vaccination campaign – only 15 vaccinations on the first day in parts of Hesse
Online appointment booking or open vaccination campaign: In Hamburg, 33,000 Novavax vaccine doses are currently available for those who want to be vaccinated. In Schleswig-Holstein, the vaccine was also vaccinated in several places on Saturday. In Prisdof, one of the vaccination communities, the demand for the Novavax agent was very manageable, according to a dpa photographer. In Saarland, an estimated 250 appointments for initial vaccinations were made in four vaccination centers on Saturday, according to Daniel Schappert from the Saarbrücken regional association.
Baden-Württemberg also gives only 360 vaccinations for the first two vaccination days – Tuesday and Wednesday. In the Groß-Gerau district, one of three districts in Hesse where the vaccine is currently being vaccinated, the number was only in double digits. According to a spokeswoman for the district, 15 vaccinations were administered by early Monday afternoon, the first day of vaccination, and a total of 4,500 vaccination doses from Novavax are currently available. The demand for vaccination did not initially increase noticeably, according to the spokeswoman for hessenschau.de .
Start of the Novavax vaccination campaign: Prioritization for medical staff has already been lifted in some places
First, Novavax should be available as a priority to unvaccinated healthcare workers, state health ministers said. Vaccination is mandatory for the industry from March 16th*. According to a study, there could be an undersupply in the medical field*. Novavax is seen as an alternative for skeptics of mRNA vaccines like those from Biontech* and Moderna* due to the protein-based manufacturing method. Just one day after the start of the vaccination campaign, the prioritization was suspended in some places.
“Due to the large number of available dates and capacities in the vaccination centers, the previous prioritization of Novavax can be lifted,” says the Lübeck news portal hl-live . From March 3, anyone over the age of 18 can schedule an appointment for Novavax. Similar reports came from Wiesbaden. According to the health department, around 100 people had registered for the first day, Monday, but not all of them showed up. According to the city of Wiesbaden, it received 4,400 doses of vaccine from the manufacturer Novavax. The health department assumes that demand will be below the quantity supplied.
The hopes of the federal government to use the Novavax vaccine to bring momentum back into the vaccination campaign do not seem to be fulfilled at the moment. It also remains to be seen how the imminent introduction of partial vaccination will have an impact. All current developments regarding the corona pandemic in Germany can be found in the news ticker. (chd/dpa) *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
Novavax vaccine
The drug was approved as the fifth corona vaccine in the EU – for people aged 18 and over. Two doses are injected about three weeks apart. It is a protein vaccine – so it is based on a different technology than the mRNA corona preparations from Pfizer and Moderna, which have been mostly used so far, and which some people have concerns about.
With the protein-based vaccine, virus-like particles are injected into the body so that it can specifically form antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. MRNA vaccines, on the other hand, stimulate the body to produce harmless copies of the spike protein itself, against which antibodies are then formed. Novavax only contains genetically engineered elements of the coronavirus and is therefore not actually counted among the so-called dead vaccines.
List of rubrics: © Roland Weihrauch/dpa
