The meeting is to discuss ways to boost vaccine production. The chancellor’s office wants to set up a special working group for this purpose
The crisis meeting of the German authorities will be held on Wednesday in Berlin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reacting to criticism of her fellow party member and Health Minister Jens Spahn over the pace of vaccination, The Bild newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The Chancellor’s Office plans to set up a special working group to discuss ways to boost vaccine production. This group will include not only Spahn, but also Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier, Vice-Chancellor and Head of the Ministry of Finance Olaf Scholz as well as the Chancellor’s Chief of Staff Helge Braun.
The German government has faced criticism from the media and a number of politicians because of what they see as a low vaccination rate. Less than 0.5% of the population in Germany has now been vaccinated. Scholz, representing the Social Democrats, referred a long list of questions to Spahn, who is a member of the Christian Democratic Union, about the reasons for the miscalculations in ordering vaccines against COVID-19.
The media saw this as a rift in the government and the start of an election race in the FRG ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for the autumn.
Spahn has previously said that all German residents will be asked to sign up for vaccination by the summer.
Vaccination against the coronavirus officially started in the EU at the end of December. By the end of 2020, Germany has received more than 1.3 million doses of the vaccine developed by a consortium of BioNTech and Pfizer, with another 4 million planned for early 2021. Germany, which has a population of about 83 million, also wants tens of millions of doses in the future from companies such as Moderna, AstraZeneca, CureVac and Johnson & Johnson.