Why does Germany not have enough vaccine doses? | DW News

It is not the beginning Germany's new Health Minister Karl Lauterbach would have hoped for. A week after taking office, he admitted on Thursday that Germany has a shortage of both BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses and that he is negotiating to buy more vaccines, mainly from Eastern European countries.

"We want to buy BioNTech from other countries — Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Portugal," he confirmed. He also suggested some of the BioNTech vaccine doses ordered for the second quarter of 2022 could be obtained earlier.

Lauterbach confirmed that 35 million additional doses of Moderna had been ordered directly from the manufacturer with EU approval. On Wednesday, Lauterbach and Finance Minister Christian Lindner announced that Germany would shell out an extra €2.2 billion ($2.48 billion) for vaccine purchases.

The third "booster shot" will be the "central building block" in the fight against the omicron variant, the health minister told the Thursday press conference, adding, "We need to be very quick."

As things stand, 50 million vaccine doses are expected in the first quarter of 2022, but 70 million are needed.

Lauterbach said he is especially concerned after examining current data from the UK, where cases of the omicron coronavirus variant are believed to be doubling on a near daily basis. He stressed that an "offensive booster strategy" is Germany's best tool in fighting the pandemic.

Meanwhile, children between the ages of 5 and 11 are now being vaccinated in Germany. It's a step many parents have long been waiting for.

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