Covid Germany: Merkel warns of third wave of infections that could trigger ANOTHER lockdown

German Chancellor Angela Merkel last night warned that new Covid variants risk a third wave of infections sweeping across the country which could provoke another national lockdown.

Coronavirus cases have started to increase again in Germany with only four per cent of the public vaccinated, while Britons are already counting down the days to freedom on June 21. 

Ms Merkel and state premiers in Germany, Europe’s most populous country and largest economy, have agreed to extend restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus until March 7.

Hair salons will be allowed to reopen from March 1, but the threshold for a gradual reopening of the rest of the economy targets an infection rate of no more than 35 new cases per 100,000 people over seven days.

While the Chancellor warns of a looming ‘third wave’, Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper Bild praises Britain’s vaccine success with a front-page heading that screamed: ‘Dear Brits, we envy you!’.    

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Ms Merkel said: ‘Because of (variants), we are entering a new phase of the pandemic, from which a third wave may emerge. So we must proceed wisely and carefully so that a third wave does not necessitate a new complete shutdown throughout Germany.’

Vaccines and comprehensive testing could allow for ‘a more regionally differentiated approach’, the Chancellor also said in the newspaper interview published online last night.

‘In a district with a stable incidence of 35, for example, it may be possible to open all schools without causing distortions in relation to other districts with a higher incidence and schools that are not yet open,’ she added.

‘An intelligent opening strategy is inextricably linked with comprehensive quick tests, as it were as free tests,’ she said. ‘I cannot say exactly how long it will take to install such a system. But it will be in March.’

Ms Merkel described Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, which some essential workers have refused, as ‘a reliable vaccine, effective and safe. As long as vaccines are as scarce as they are at the moment, you can’t choose what you want to be vaccinated with.’    

Bild’s front-page headline has the words ‘we envy you’, partly in English, superimposed over the Union Jack – with a caption saying that ‘the English have announced their return to normality on June 21… and here there’s no hope’. 

The article describes Britons as ‘just plain happy’, adding that they had ‘reacted with overwhelming euphoria’ to the PM’s announcement on Monday. ‘It means: Normal life is coming back! FREEDOM!,’ the article published in Wednesday’s paper says. 

‘That’s made possible by the successful vaccination campaign,’ it says, noting that more than 17.7million people have received a jab in the UK compared to 3.4million in larger Germany. 

The article goes on: ‘While the Brits are already planning their summer holidays, Germany is stuck in lockdown. 

‘That’s because chancellor Angela Merkel, who as recently as Monday was holding out the prospect of loosening lockdown, sounded the alarm again yesterday.’

Chancellor Merkel told party colleagues on Tuesday that ‘we are now in the third wave’, warning that any easing of lockdown after March 7 could only take place gradually. 

The chancellor, a trained scientist, has long been cautious about a hasty exit from lockdown – and Germany’s jab programme is not moving fast enough to protect a large share of the population at this stage.  

A second Bild article describes Johnson’s plans as a ‘Corona-Brexit’, and asks: ‘When will we catch up to the Brits?’. 

‘The deficit is growing: at the moment the Brits are vaccinating nearly three times as many people per day,’ it says. 

‘Herd immunity on the island [meaning Britain] certainly appears in sight. And that’s why the Brits want to open up.’   

While Ms Merkel has come under fire for letting Brussels take the lead in the vaccine race, the EU’s supply problems have been made worse by many Germans’ reluctance to take the AstraZeneca vaccine after European leaders voiced doubts about the jab.

Germany was among the countries which refused to let over-65s take the jab because of limited trial data, in contrast to Britain where real-world data this week showed the jab cutting hospitalisations in Scotland by 94 per cent. 

Emmanuel Macron added fuel to the fire in France by casting doubt on the jab’s effectiveness and claiming that Britain had taken a risk by approving it so quickly.  

Ms Merkel’s office is now pleading with Germans to take the AstraZeneca shot after only 187,000 of the jabs were administered out of the first 1.5million delivered.    

‘The vaccine from AstraZeneca is both safe and highly effective,’ Ms Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday. ‘The vaccine can save lives.’

EU chief Ursula von on der Leyen has now joined in that effort, saying that she herself would take the vaccine despite her earlier feud with the company. 

‘I would take the AstraZeneca vaccine without a second thought, just like Moderna’s and BioNTech/Pfizer’s products,’ von der Leyen told the Augsburger Allgemeine. 

The EU’s AstraZeneca problems are set to continue into the spring, with as many as 90million doses expected to be missing from shipments in the second quarter of 2021.

An EU official involved in talks with the firm says the company has warned that it may deliver only half of its promised 180million doses from April to June.   

It comes after Brussels reacted with fury last month when AstraZeneca said it would cut deliveries to the bloc because of delays at a Belgian factory. 

After AstraZeneca warned of shortfalls but continued to supply Britain in full, the EU published its contract with the firm and claimed to have cast-iron commitments. 

Brussels also imposed export controls on jab shipments leaving the bloc, but was forced into retreat after initially saying they would apply to Northern Ireland. 

But AstraZeneca’s CEO blamed the delays on the fact that the EU had not signed a contract until three months after Britain had tied up a deal last year.

AstraZeneca is not exporting vaccines made in the UK, in line with its separate contract with the British government.

But AstraZeneca has told the EU it could provide more doses from its global supply chain, including from India and the United States, an EU official said last week.   

Also under fire is Ms Merkel’s health minister Jens Spahn, who has been criticised over the vaccine fiasco and suffered further humiliation this week when his plan to roll out rapid testing from March 1 was torpedoed by the Chancellor’s office. 

The rapid-testing plan will now merely be discussed at talks between Ms Merkel and state premiers on March 3, the chancellor’s spokesman said. 

As recently as last week, Spahn had promised that the publicly-funded tests would be available from March 1 in pharmacies and local testing centres. ‘These testing options can contribute to a safe everyday life, especially in schools and daycare centres,’ Spahn had said. 

The government’s popularity has also been hit by the prolonged lockdown which has turned Germany’s success of last spring into a much bleaker picture this winter. 

After seeing fewer than 10,000 deaths during the first wave, Germany’s death toll is now above 68,000 and a weeks-long decline in cases has now come to a halt.  

The last seven days have seen 52,419 new cases, up from 50,403 the week before, and the closely-watched R rate has been as high as 1.25. 

The stagnation means that the infection rate per 100,000 people, currently 59.3, is hovering agonisingly above the level of 50 identified as a benchmark for re-opening.

Germany’s success in the first wave means its total death rate is still well below Britain’s, with 68,740 deaths compared to the UK’s 121,305.   

EU is set to receive 90 MILLION fewer AstraZeneca jabs than expected in latest blow to their vaccine drive – as Ursula von der Leyen admits she would take the jab despite Europe’s scaremongering

Europe’s vaccine chaos is set to continue into the spring with as many as 90million doses missing from AstraZeneca shipments in the second quarter of 2021. 

An EU official involved in talks with the firm says AstraZeneca has warned that it may deliver only half of its promised 180million doses from April to June.   

It comes after Brussels reacted with fury last month when AstraZeneca said it would cut deliveries to the bloc because of delays at a Belgian factory. 

The new shortage could hamper the EU’s ability to meet its target of vaccinating 70 per cent of adults by summer – with Britain promising to offer one dose to 100 per cent by July 31.  

EU leaders have also made matters worse by raising doubts about the AstraZeneca jab despite its proven effectiveness – with Germany now pleading with its citizens to take the jab after the scaremongering led to low uptake.  

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, 62, has also sought to quell doubts by saying that she herself would take the AstraZeneca jab. 

‘I would take the AstraZeneca vaccine without a second thought, just like Moderna’s and BioNTech/Pfizer’s products,’ von der Leyen told the Augsburger Allgemeine. 

But she also continued to voice doubts about the UK’s strategy of delaying second doses – a move approved by Britain’s chief medical officers – as she claimed that the EU was ‘catching up’ in the vaccine race.  

 The EU supply shortage is seen as one of the main reasons for a widely-criticised vaccine roll-out which is lagging far behind that in Britain. 

While the UK has handed out 27.0 doses per 100 people, the EU is lagging behind on 6.2 and has not significantly sped up its progress in recent weeks. 

Von der Leyen defended her policies by pointing out that the EU had handed out 27milion doses in total compared to 17million in Britain – but the bloc of 27 countries has a population more than six times larger.  

She also noted that Italy had given double-doses to more people than Britain, but it has handed out far fewer doses overall.  

Catching up to Britain will be made even harder if AstraZeneca shortfalls continue into the early summer, as an EU official told Reuters. 

AstraZeneca is producing vaccines at two plants in the UK, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, but is not exporting its British-made jabs under its contract with UK ministers – although it has offered the EU doses made in India and the US. 

The official said AstraZeneca planned to deliver about 40million doses in the first quarter, less than half the 90million shots it was supposed to supply. 

It was also due to deliver 30 million doses in the last quarter of 2020 but did not supply any shots last year as its vaccine had yet to be approved by the EU.

All told, AstraZeneca’s total supply to the EU could be about 130 million doses by the end of June, well below the 300 million it committed to deliver to the bloc by then.

AstraZeneca did not deny the EU official’s claims, but said it was striving to increase productivity in order to meet its 180million target. 

‘We are hopeful that we will be able to bring our deliveries closer in line with the advance purchase agreement,’ an AstraZeneca spokesman said. 

Later in the day, the firm added that its ‘most recent Q2 forecast… aims to deliver in line with its contract with the European Commission’.    

‘At this stage AstraZeneca is working to increase productivity in its EU supply chain and to continue to make use of its global capability in order to achieve delivery of 180 million doses to the EU in the second quarter,’ it said. 

A European Commission spokesman declined to comment on confidential talks but said the EU should have enough shots even if the AstraZeneca targets are not met.   

An EU regulator approved the AstraZeneca jab in late January but the ruling was overshadowed by a furious political row over the delayed shipments. 

After AstraZeneca warned of shortfalls but continued to supply Britain in full, the EU published its contract with the firm and claimed to have cast-iron commitments. 

Brussels also imposed export controls on jab shipments leaving the bloc, but was forced into retreat after initially saying they would apply to Northern Ireland. 

But AstraZeneca’s CEO blamed the delays on the fact that the EU had not signed a contract until three months after Britain had tied up a deal last year. 

AstraZeneca is not exporting vaccines made in the UK, in line with its separate contract with the British government. 

But AstraZeneca has told the EU it could provide more doses from its global supply chain, including from India and the United States, an EU official said last week.   

AstraZeneca is now forecast to make up its shortfalls by the end of September, according to a German health ministry document.  

German officials expect to receive 34million doses in the third quarter, taking the country to its full entitlement of 56million out of the EU’s 300million doses. 

Despite its approval by EU regulators, the AstraZeneca vaccine has met with resistance in some countries – further slowing the European roll-out. 

Some countries including France and Germany have refused to approve it for over-65s because of limited trial data, despite the firm’s assurances that it is effective. 

French president Emmanuel Macron added fuel to the fire by questioning the jab’s effectiveness and claiming Britain had taken a risk by authorising it so soon. 

The effect of such scaremongering is that only 187,000 AstraZeneca shots have been administered in Germany out of 1.5million due to have been delivered by last week.   

German leaders have now launched a public relations push to reassure the public that the shot developed at Oxford University is effective.

‘The vaccine from AstraZeneca is both safe and highly effective,’ Ms Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday. ‘The vaccine can save lives.’

Von der Leyen has now joined in that effort, saying that she herself would take the vaccine despite her earlier feud with the company.     

What IS behind Britain’s vaccine drive slowing down? All the answers to your questions on the AstraZeneca/Pfizer supply issues which ministers say is to blame

Britain’s vaccine rollout has slowed down over the past month, with ministers and manufacturers pointing the finger at each other for the hold-up.

With a successful immunisation drive crucial to Britain’s hopes of restrictions getting eased drastically over the next few months, critics say it is vital the programme picks up speed to avoid Boris Johnson‘s ambitious plans getting derailed.

Just 192,000 people were vaccinated on Monday and 142,000 on Sunday, in two of the lowest daily tolls since the mammoth NHS operation began to gather steam at the start of the year.

Ministers have repeatedly blamed the supply of vaccines as being the ‘rate-limiting factor’ of the programme, and the UK’s reliance on just two companies’ jabs makes the situation precarious.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said there was ‘no problem’ with the supply chain and Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer, agreed that ‘fluctuations’ were anticipated.

Officials say smaller deliveries were expected because Pfizer had to improve its key factory in Belgium at the start of the year, and AstraZeneca’s production was slower to get off the ground than planned.

However, both drug giants have insisted that there are no unforeseen issues with the supply chain, as Nicola Sturgeon said Scotland’s rollout couldn’t speed up until ‘the supplies start to flow in greater volumes again’.

And the concerns spread wider than Britain when an EU official revealed that AstraZeneca is now set to deliver only half of the planned doses to the continent in the second quarter of this year as the firm recovers from a row with the bloc earlier in the year about its supply commitments.

Despite fears that deliveries are slowing down, Matt Hancock has promised ‘bumper’ weeks in March to compensate for the lag. Supply figures published by the Scottish Government in mid-January appeared to back his claims, which the number of doses being delivered next month set to be significantly higher. 

Here, MailOnline digs into why Britain’s vaccination drive has slowed down:

What slowed down Pfizer’s vaccine? 

One of the biggest hold-ups in vaccine delivery appears to have been Pfizer doing maintenance work at its manufacturing facility in Belgium.

As part of preparing to produce hundreds of millions of doses for countries around the world, the company admitted in January that it would be delaying deliveries.

A frustrated EU Commission said the delay was caused by ‘modifications at the plant’ and Pfizer planned to have finished them by mid-February.

Pfizer confirmed the disruption would affect all countries in Europe and told the Financial Times: ‘Although this will temporarily impact shipments in late January to early February, it will provide a significant increase in doses available for patients in late February and March.’ 

The Scottish Government plans showed that the deliveries from Pfizer would fall by a third from around 128,000 doses in the final week of January to 80-83,000 per week throughout February before spiking back to 130,000 or more in March. 

Scotland gets around eight per cent of the UK’s vaccine supply, suggesting the deliveries for the UK as a whole may have changed from 1.6million per week to 1m.

Pfizer told MailOnline there were ‘no UK supply challenges’ and deliveries were arriving as planned. 

What slowed down AstraZeneca’s vaccine? 

The UK’s other major vaccine supplier, AstraZeneca, is making up for the majority of jabs being given out and is expected to be supplying 2million doses per week.

This rapid pace of delivery came later than expected, however, which delayed the NHS’s plans to roll it out to care homes and GP surgeries across the country.

Mid-January had been the original target for two million per week, The Times reported at the start of the year, but this was pushed back by a month.

In a briefing on January 13 AstraZeneca president Tom Keith-Roach said the commitment would be met ‘on or before the middle of February’.  

The Scottish delivery figures show that AstraZeneca’s supplies were also scheduled to be low in February.

They would fall from a high of 261,000 doses in a week in late January to none at all in one week in the middle of the month, before escalating to more than 300,000 per week from the beginning of March. 

A spokesman for AstraZeneca said on Monday that although there had been ‘fluctuations’ in supply at plants, the firm was still ‘on track’ with orders. 

Why are the UK and Europe being affected differently?

Pfizer’s manufacturing issues appear to affect the European Union and Britain equally, but AstraZeneca’s are different because it manufactures the vaccines in different places. 

The AstraZeneca vaccine is a natural product – it is a genetically engineered virus made to look like the coronavirus – so must be grown naturally.  

The cells needed to make the jab will only reproduce as fast as they naturally can, and astronomical quantities of them are needed, which means the process will always take a minimum amount of time. 

AstraZeneca says it takes three months, on average, to make each batch of the vaccine.

Numerous ones are made at the same time but this means that there is an upper limit to how much or how fast one plant can make jabs.

And the yields of these natural batches are also not entirely controllable – the company said it had not produced as much as it had hoped at the start of the production. 

Low yields at major European supply plants in Belgium have devastated supply plans on the continent, but Britain makes its own supply in England where the success rate has been higher.

Is there an easy solution? 

The UK’s ‘lumpy’ supply cannot be improved easily because there is no quick fix for such a huge manufacturing operation.

Other countries have vaccine orders of equal or higher priority – Pfizer is being used widely in Europe, for example, and Moderna is still unavailable to the UK because it was later to place orders than the US and EU.

And of the vaccines Britain is already receiving, manufacturing cannot be sped up infinitely.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, explained on Sky News: ‘There are always going to be supply fluctuations. 

‘These are new vaccines, by and large the manufacturers have not made them or anything like them before.

‘The process of making a vaccine is one where, basically, you set the equipment up and leave it all to do its thing – a bit like beer-making really.

‘What you get at the end is not something that you can say is identical every time in terms of the yield, the amount of doses you can then make from that batch.’

He added that it will take ‘a few months’ before the manufacturers can get into a steady routine, he said, and there were also ‘global supply constraints’.

Will the UK’s vaccine rollout speed up?

Ministers insist that the vaccination programme will speed up significantly in March when supplies become bigger and more regular. 

The Government is aiming to vaccinate everyone over the age of 50 by May, and Boris Johnson said he plans to offer a first dose to all adults in the UK by July 31.  

Moderna’s vaccine, of which the UK is expecting seven million doses and has already approved for us, will start to be delivered from the end of March. 

Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, suggested the rollout could even go twice as fast in its second phase in order to keep reaching people at the same rate as now while also giving out the second doses to elderly people.

He said at a Downing Street briefing last week: ‘In this next phase, the second sprint, actually we’re going to be vaccinating a larger number of people than in the first sprint.

‘And overall, although supply will vary week to week and we’ve got to adjust accordingly, we may be giving up to twice as many vaccinations overall – given we’ve got to be doing second doses as well – than we have done in the first sprint.’

Health Secretary Matt Hancock also said vaccination figures would stay low for the rest of this week in an interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari.

He said it will be a ‘quieter week’ for the vaccine rollout because of a drop in stockpiles, warning that the success of the drive was ‘all about supply’.

Mr Hancock added: ‘We have got a quieter week this week and then we’re going to have some really bumper weeks in March.’

Pointing the blame at vaccine manufacturers, he also claimed there has been ‘ups and downs’ in the delivery schedule.  

Why is it important for the rollout to progress quickly? 

Britain’s vaccination programme must go quickly because the country’s entire route out of lockdown hinges on it.

Boris Johnson’s plans to lift lockdown rules are based on vaccinating the majority of people who are likely to die if they catch coronavirus.

The more people who can be successfully vaccinated with at least one dose, the faster the rules can be loosened because the lower the death count of the third wave could be expected to be.

A third wave of the virus is now inevitable, with cases expected to skyrocket when lockdown ends, but the impact of this will be more tolerable if the majority of adults in the country are immune to the virus. 

Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said that Britain will struggle to stick to its plans if vaccination rates don’t pick up ‘very soon’. 

Professor Hunter pointed out that the rapid decline in positive coronavirus tests seen earlier in the lockdown appears to be levelling off now, and the number of people being vaccinated each day are dropping lower at the same time.

He warned: ‘Taken together, these two observations are concerning…

‘If more of our vulnerable people were protected from severe disease through immunisation, then we could allow some increase in numbers without posing a substantial extra risk of severe disease and hospitalisation. 

‘However, a lot of people admitted to hospital with Covid are still not in the groups where vaccination has been completed.

‘If vaccination rates do not pick up very soon, then we will struggle to give enough people their first dose before we have to allocate more and more of our available doses to people’s second injections. 

‘This could lead to more potentially vulnerable individuals being unprotected for a lot longer than we had expected as we try to relax restrictions further. This would have the real potential to derail the UK’s road plan for coming out of lockdown.’