The German government’s panicked reaction on reports about negative side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which suspended the national vaccination campaign for a full week, is but the latest serious incident broadening popular discontent with the government’s handling of the pandemic. So far, barely 10% of the population have received the vaccine, and 100% are not likely to be reached before the end of 2023, at the present pace. A sign of hope is indications that finally, the government may give up its reservations against the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and purchase some of it. If Germany would do so, the quorum of four EU member states would be reached which forces the European Medicines Agency EMA to seriously consider putting the Russian vaccine on the list of licensed medical substances.
The acute problems in handling the pandemic, with rapidly increasing new infection rates which will lead to a hardening of the present lockdown extending it into mid-April at least, can be traced back to the policies of budget-cutting, privatizations and streamlining of the hospitals in Germany over the past two decades. Already before the pandemic reached Germany, it had reduced the number of nurses in the crucial intensive care units by one-third and replaced many full-time jobs with “full-time equivalents,” which means that two part-time nurses share one full-time job. Remaining ICU beds in many hospitals cannot even be used for lack of medical staff. A survey presented by the German Hospital Institute (DKI) in the autumn of 2019 documented all that in quite some detail.
The remaining personnel have been exhausted by forced overtime during the pandemic in 2021, government decrees have worsened the situation by suspending labor protection clauses; the Pflege-online journal for healthcare personnel even reports that in many cases, nurses with COVID infections have been forced to continue working. And—the job-cutting continues in hospitals despite the pandemic: the case of the Gesundheit Nord Bremen Hospital Group which is determined to fire 440 nurses and other staff, has made national headlines in the past days.
