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Germany’s fourth COVID wave: ‘A pandemic

of the unvaccinated’
Katrin Bennhold, The New York Times
Published: 12 Nov 2021 02:10 PM BdST Updated: 12 Nov 2021 02:10 PM BdST

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Unvaccinated s
reflect on their
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An employee wears a protective face mask during work in a bakery, as the 3G (recovered, vaccinated or
tested), coronavirus rules are being introduced, amid the spread of COVID-19, in Munich, Germany, Nov 11,
2021. REUTERS/Lukas Barth Finland plans t
workers see
The University Hospital of Giessen, one of Germany’s foremost clinics for pulmonary disease, colleagues’ sa
is at capacity. The number of COVID-19 patients has tripled in recent weeks. Nearly half of them
are on ventilators.

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And every single one is unvaccinated.

US-China arms
“I ask every patient: Why didn’t you get vaccinated?” said Dr. Susanne Herold, head of infectious gets more com
diseases, after her daily round on the ward Thursday. “It’s a mix of people who distrust the vaccine,
distrust the state and are often difficult to reach by public information campaigns.”

Patients like hers are the main drivers of a fourth wave of COVID-19 cases in Germany that has
produced tens of thousands of new daily infections — more than the country has had at any point in the
pandemic.
Is the Great
For Germany it is a startling turnabout. At the onset of the pandemic, Germany had set an example for Resignation a
how to manage the virus and keep the death toll low. It was quick to put in place widespread testing
and treatment and to expand the number of intensive care beds, and it had a trusted leader in
Chancellor Angela Merkel, a trained scientist, whose government’s social distancing guidelines were
widely observed.

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But today, a combination of factors has propelled a new surge, among them wintry temperatures, a
News
slow rollout of booster vaccines, and an even more Business
pronounced spikeOpinion Sport
in infections Cricket Health
in neighboring Classifieds
Ex-wheat ins
eastern European nations like the Czech Republic. The fact that Germany is in a kind of political limbo death in Dhak
as it transitions between governments has not helped.
A remnant of
But virus experts and pandemic experts say there is little doubt that it is the unvaccinated who are historic Dhak
contributing most to the wave of infections burdening hospitals across the country.
Newly elected
beaten to dea
“It’s our low rate of vaccination; we haven’t done what was necessary,” said Herold. She was part of a
team of scientists who modelled the impact of a fourth wave and warned in early summer that with the Sajeeb Waze
hypercontagious delta variant, at least 85% of the whole population would need to be vaccinated to Leadership A
avert a crisis in the health care system.
COVID-19's e
“We are still below 70%,” she said. “I don’t know how we can win this race against time with the fourth fresh reckoni
wave. I fear we’ve already lost.”
Healthcare gi
Germany’s vaccination rate is far better than that of many central and eastern European countries, split into two
where the death toll from coronavirus is soaring. In Romania, for example, only about 4 in 10 people
‘The war has
have had two shots, and coronavirus deaths have hit record levels. Huq says dev
to give anythi
Still, with about 1 in 3 Germans not yet fully vaccinated, the German vaccination rate is among the
lowest in Western Europe. In Belgium, Denmark and Italy, 3 in 4 people are fully vaccinated. In Spain Bangladesh r
and Iceland, only about 2 in 10 have yet to get the second shot. Portugal has a vaccination rate of 221 cases in
close to 90%.
SSC test cen
The German rate lags because of pockets of vaccine resistance that are not limited to but are COVID-19
especially deep in the former Communist east, where the far-right Alternative for Germany party is
'India got free
strong. Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, leaders of the AfD’s parliamentary group, are both proudly
Ranaut spark
unvaccinated — and both tested positive for the virus in recent weeks.
remarks

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“What we are experiencing is above all a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the minister of health, Jens
Spahn, said this month.

Infections have also spiked in parts of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, two wealthy southern states
that are home to a noisy protest movement against measures to combat the virus, known as the
“Querdenker,” or “contrarians.”

“We have two viruses in the country,” Markus Söder, the Bavarian governor, said in a television debate
recently. “We have coronavirus, and we have this poison, which is being spread on a massive scale,”
he said referring to misinformation about vaccines.

Klaus-Peter Hanke knows about that poisonous propaganda firsthand.

He is the mayor of Pirna, a town of less than 40,000 in the eastern state of Saxony, which experienced
a wave of violent protests from anti-vaxxers in the final days of the lockdown last spring.

One in three voters in the voting district that includes Pirna cast their ballots for the AfD in September’s
national election. And just under half of inhabitants refuse to get vaccinated. They have helped to make
Saxony the state with the lowest vaccination rate in Germany — and with the highest per capita
number of new infections.

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“The readiness to get vaccinated is low here,” Hanke said. “We tried to counter that with dialogue. But
there is a point where you hit a wall, and you justNews Business
can’t get any further,Opinion Sportis that
and one result Cricket
it has Health Classifieds
escalated.”

The COVID ward at the hospital is running out of beds. There, too, almost all patients are
unvaccinated, Hanke said: “Nine out of 10.”

And still, several restaurants in town have signs in the window, inviting “everyone” — not just those
vaccinated or recovered from an infection, as per state rules — to come inside.

This week, the mayor set up 10 control teams of three people each — a police officer, a health official
and someone from the department of public order — to roam the city’s restaurants, bars and
hairdressers and fine those disregarding the rules on the spot. Owners have to pay 500 euros, about
$572; patrons 150 euros, $170.

“It’s pretty drastic,” said Hanke, who has vaccine resisters in his own circle of friends. “But we see no
other way to get people to change their behaviour.”

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Anecdotally at least, the tough approach might be paying off. Waiting times at mobile vaccination units
increased to two hours this week, Hanke reported, suggesting that the threat of exclusion from much of
indoor public life might be nudging more people to get a shot.

Several other German states are now working on similar regulations, introducing stricter mask
mandates and, instead of a negative test, making proof of vaccination or past infection mandatory for
entry to many venues.

That may no longer be enough, said Sandra Ciesek, director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the
University Hospital of Frankfurt and cosignatory of a paper by seven prominent scientists published last
week, in which they urge politicians to speed up booster shots and consider a range of measures,
including partial lockdowns for the unvaccinated or even a short-term national lockdown.
 
The absence of political leadership at the national level at a time when the number of new daily
infections is soaring beyond 50,000 has added to the muddled approach to containing the virus.

Since her conservative party lost the national election in September, Merkel remains only as the head
of a caretaker government, while her likely successor, Olaf Scholz, has been absorbed by difficult Email
coalition talks with two other parties.

“Where is Angela Merkel?” Der Spiegel asked in an article this week, before asking, a few paragraphs
lower, “Where is Scholz?”

It is a question many virus experts across the country are asking, too, concerned that a lack of political
leadership is wasting valuable time — and potentially costing lives.

“There is no real centre of power and responsibility. The country is missing leadership,” said Michael
Meyer-Hermann, head of the department of Systems Immunology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection
Research and a member of the council of experts that has advised Merkel throughout the pandemic.

“The outgoing government no longer really reacts, and the incoming government is playing everything
down,” he added.

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After the number of daily new coronavirus infections hit a record high Nov. 3, reaching 33,949, German
virus experts sounded the alarm. The response News Business
from Scholz’s Opinion partners
future coalition Sport was
Cricket Health
a statement Classifieds
promising that there would not be another lockdown.

“For me it was a key moment,” Meyer-Hermann said. “They act like the pandemic is over at a time
when the numbers are exploding.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

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