NOh attention The actual number of people vaccinated for the first time in Germany may be much higher than previously assumed. plan Robert Koch Institute Investigate further to better assess the progress of the vaccination campaign. The institute said on request that, among other things, about 3,000 people will be asked if they are willing to be vaccinated in early fall and whether they will accept it. The results of the last comparable survey with approximately 1,000 participants, which were announced on Tuesday, deviated significantly from the official digital vaccination rate monitoring (DIM) vaccination rate. The age group is 18 to 59 years old.
The institute compared doses reported by vaccination centers, mobile vaccination teams, general practitioners, and company doctors in Digital Vaccination Rate Monitoring (DIM) with telephone surveys of 1,005 adults. For the particularly relevant adult group between the ages of 18 and 59, DIM shows 59%, while the so-called Covimo survey shows 79%. As an explanation, RKI experts cited several possible reasons. Among other things, some of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccinations provide only one dose to provide full protection and are only recorded as the second vaccination. In addition, so far, only about half of the company doctors registered in the reporting system have reported vaccination status through a web application.
RKI: Insufficient records in reporting systems are usually not uncommon
According to RKI on Thursday, it is important that the under-recording in digital vaccination rate monitoring is for the first vaccination and not for the complete vaccination. In the reporting system, insufficient registration is usually not uncommon. RKI assumes that vaccination rates map events very reliably. In addition, RKI stated that it is currently preparing a supplementary multilingual survey that will cover the most common foreign languages. This is also to cover citizens who cannot participate in German surveys due to their language skills.
DIM is based on reports from vaccination centers, hospitals, mobile vaccination teams, and company doctors; according to RKI, it also includes data from residents and private doctors.Together they make up The so-called vaccination dashboard, Where the vaccination rate is updated every working day. There is also RKI’s Covimo survey, which infers the vaccination rate based on the survey.
In view of the uncertainty in the number of coronavirus vaccines actually vaccinated in Germany, intensive care doctors also called for a representative population survey of the national vaccination rate. “Vaccination is a key success factor for the pandemic. We must do everything we can to increase confidence in the vaccination campaign,” said Gernot Marx, chairman of the Intensive Care Medicine Association Divi and Funke Media Group newspaper. The Federal Ministry of Health currently has no plans to conduct such an investigation. Marx said: “Reliable numbers are the basis for accepting corona measures.” If the vaccination rate for the 18 to 59-year-old population is actually much higher than reported, “our situation will be much easier, especially in the fall.” The exact number of people vaccinated must be quickly recorded through independent and representative surveys.
The Federal Ministry of Health currently has no plans to make any alternative records of the number of vaccinations. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health told AFP: “The number of vaccinations will be reported every day.” “These figures are not based on surveys, but on the information of vaccination centers, residents and company doctors reported to RKI.”
SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach believes that, in his own words, the vaccination rate in Germany may be underestimated. Lauterbach told the Fink newspaper that his observation was that the vaccination center was no longer overcrowded. “There may be two reasons, higher vaccination fatigue, or the actual vaccination rate is higher than generally assumed,” he said. Both are possible.
Brandenburg State Health Minister Ursula Nonimach (Green Party) stated in the RBB that these figures have long been suspected to be incorrect. “This may be because the electronic data transmitted to the Robert Koch Institute is not always very effective.” It is said that company doctors especially have difficulty with these reports.
According to RKI In Germany, 62.8% of the population received at least one dose of the vaccine. 56.1% of Germans are completely immune to the corona virus. At the same time, the 7-day incidence rate continued to rise: Thursday morning it was 27.6-25.1 the day before, and 19.4 a week ago. German health authorities reported 5,638 new coronavirus infections to RKI in one day. A week ago, the value in Germany was 3539 infections. An increase of 59% in 7 days.
