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Germany has reached the Covid-19 vaccine accelerator and plans to abolish its priority system for all vaccines by the end of next month.
The state governments of Berlin, Bavaria, Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania had a head start on Thursday, all of which suspended their priority proceedings for the AstraZeneca vaccine.
From now on, anyone can have their family doctor vaccinated if they are made aware of rare but serious side effects.
Germany’s official recommendation is to give AstraZeneca to people over 60 after diagnosing a rare blood clot condition in 31 cases, or one case per 100,000 doses.
Health officials said policy change is a result of a growing range of vaccines and a desire to reduce supplies of so-called “vector” vaccines like AstraZeneca before switching to mRNA vaccines like BioNTech.
After a slow start, more than a fifth of the German population has now received at least one vaccination. The news of the liberalized vaccination regime came when the 16 German federal states in the upper house of parliament, the Bundestag, supported a plan for tougher, uniform lockdown proposals from next Monday.
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn was “happy†about the prospect of a more liberal vaccination regime, but warned against “raising false hopesâ€.
“As of June, prioritization can be abolished,” he said, “but the third wave cannot be tested away.”
Restrictions
On Thursday, official German data showed almost 30,000 new infections within 24 hours, one of the highest in the one-year pandemic.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier signed a controversial new law on Thursday afternoon that gives the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin control over the pandemic restrictions in Germany.
The new draft law, which has already been challenged several times before the Federal Constitutional Court, ends a year of often great divergences in the implementation of the between Dr. Merkel and the heads of state and government agreed on regulations.
In a final debate in the Federal Council on Thursday morning, the 16 German Prime Ministers – including those of Dr. Merkel’s CDU – your concerns about the procedure.
Volker Bouffier, Governor of Hesse, described it as a mixture of “fear and paternalismâ€, while Rainer Haseloff, Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, described the new centralized approach as “a low point in Germany’s federal cultureâ€.
From Monday, the new rules will apply in regions with an incidence rate of more than 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants for seven days – currently 85 percent of the country.
New procedures, with a few exceptions, impose a nightly curfew between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. while essential retail stores remain open. Non-essential shops and services may be opened to people with a negative Covid test below an incidence rate of 150.
Private indoor gatherings are limited to members of a single household and one additional person, to a maximum of six people. Contactless outdoor sports are allowed, while employers are obliged to give employees a home office option or, if this is not possible, a free test once a week.
German schools are closed in regions with an incidence rate above 165.
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