[ad_1]
German Health Minister Jens Spahn came under fire Wednesday on another front besides the country’s sluggish coronavirus vaccine campaign: His failed promise to roll out rapid antigen tests.
Spahn, who pledged that rapid tests and self tests would become a key part of Germany’s coronavirus strategy starting in March, got a testy reception on Wednesday as he spoke to lawmakers.
Spahn pitched the tests so that visiting public places like concerts and care homes was safer, initially promising to roll out mass testing on March 1. He then had to go back on his word when Chancellor Angela Merkel decided on Monday to address the issue on March 3, at her next conference with Germany’s state premiers.
Germans didn’t take the news very well. They’ve grown more critical of the government’s pandemic management amid a slow vaccine uptake and growing concern that new virus variants will destroy any gains from lockdown.
Spahn nonetheless tried to strike an optimistic tone on Wednesday, announcing that self-tests would be available at stores across the country “in the coming days” following approval by the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices. But he still faced barbs from lawmakers in the afternoon.
Emphasizing it had taken a whole year from the onset of the pandemic to approve rapid tests, Green MP Janosch Dahmen asked Spahn if he at least intended “to provide such rapid tests … free of charge or affordably in sufficient quantities” — as has neighboring Austria.
Spahn declined to be specific on questions of cost and potential government subsidies, saying instead that prices of self-tests were up to the market: “As for the question of whether and to what extent subsidies are necessary, it makes a difference to me whether a test [in retail] costs two euros or ten euros,” he said.
Spahn also defended the government against charges that it took too long to approve the tests. If such tests will be used in the fight against a pandemic, he said, they need to be vetted properly to ensure they yield accurate results — which requires studies and therefore time.
He also rebuffed a question from Paul Viktor Podolay of the far-right Alternative for Germany on whether the government would continue to base lockdown measures on infection numbers even if ramped-up testing led to a spike in detected infections. It’s better to insist on taking lockdown measures “earlier and [ideally for a shorter period]” than waiting too long until painful lockdowns are unavoidable, he said.
In related news, Germany took another set toward addressing widespread unhappiness with the vaccination program by setting up a Vaccine Production Task Force to monitor potential bottlenecks in production and work with manufacturers to quickly resolve these issues.
The taskforce will be the point of contact for businesses and the EU and report to the new State Secretaries Committee under Andreas Feicht, state secretary at the German economy and energy ministry.
Alongside monitoring bottlenecks, the task force has been charged with ensuring that there’s sufficient manufacturing capacity for mRNA and vector vaccines to supply the population and cement the country as a front-runner in the EU for research and production of new technologies such as mRNA.
Ashleigh Furlong contributed reporting.
[ad_2]
Source link
