Angela Merkel is known for her competency, yet even Mutti’s defenders would struggle to use that word to describe Germany’s rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine. German firm BioNTech won the race to develop a vaccine, but this has not prevented crippling supply shortages, which has forced states including North Rhine-Westphalia, in the west of the country, to suspend jabs.
German health minister Jens Spahn has come under fire and his insistence that ‘the vaccine is a scarce product worldwide’ rings hollow when Germans look at the speed of the vaccine rollout in Britain. Now, to make matters worse, German’s health ministry has found itself caught in a fresh row: over the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
German newspaper Handelsblatt reported earlier today that the German federal government only expects the jab to have an effectiveness of eight per cent among the over 65s. AstraZeneca was quick to shoot down the story, which appears to have been based on a mistaken interpretation of data on the age of participants in a vaccine trial. The German
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