Vaccine Uptake Plummets... Germany Sends Surplus Stock to China

Could Result in Over 200 Million Disposals

German health authorities are struggling to manage hundreds of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine stockpiles. This is due to a slowdown in vaccination rates within Germany as vigilance against infectious diseases has waned.

On the 1st (local time), German media outlets such as 'Welt am Sonntag' cited data from the German Ministry of Health, reporting that "as of December 19 last year, the government was holding 151 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines." In addition, the German government has contracts to supply an additional 137 million doses by the end of this year.

Among the vaccines contracted by the German government, 96 million doses were jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. Germany has signed contracts worth approximately 10 billion euros with vaccine manufacturers. The European Union (EU), to which Germany belongs, is also pursuing additional negotiations.

Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine / Photo by Yonhap News

The problem lies in the fact that vaccine demand within Germany has sharply declined, leading to a surplus of vaccines. The Robert Koch Institute, which provides COVID-19 related statistics, reported that as of the end of last year, the average daily number of vaccinations in Germany was about 25,000.

This is a significant drop compared to over 1 million daily vaccinations two years ago when the spread of the 'Delta variant' and the severity of infections were high.

The majority of vaccine stockpiles in Germany consist of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, which have strict storage requirements and short shelf lives. Typically, mRNA vaccines must be stored in ultra-low temperature freezers at around -20 degrees Celsius and are recommended to be used within approximately six months from the manufacturing date. There is a risk that most of the approximately 200 million doses stored by German health authorities could be discarded.

Meanwhile, last month, the German government sent 10,500 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to five cities in China. This is the first Western vaccine to be administered on the Chinese mainland. However, since Chinese health authorities have only approved the use of domestically produced vaccines such as Sinovac and Sinopharm, the vaccines sent by Germany can only be administered to Western nationals residing in China.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.