Germany spends additional 2.2 bln euros to buy more COVID vaccines

A medical technical assistant holds ready-to-use children’s doses of Comirnaty, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a practice of a children’s doctor, as Germany rolls out vaccinations for the five to eleven year old children, in Bonn, Germany, December 15, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

BERLIN, Dec 15 (Reuters) – The German parliament’s budget committee has made an additional 2.2 billion euros ($2.48 billion) of funds available for COVID-19 vaccine procurement, Germany’s health and finance ministers said on Wednesday.

The vaccines are urgently needed amid the fourth wave of infections currently sweeping the country, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told Reuters in Berlin.

He said more vaccines were needed in the short term and that procurement was already underway.

Lauterbach had told state health ministers on Tuesday that not enough vaccines had been ordered for the first three months of 2022.

“Now there is the possibility for Germany to procure additional doses for the next year,” said Finance Minister Christian Lindner at a joint news conference announcing the funds.

“We are talking about 92 million doses of Biontech-Pfizer and Moderna,” he said.

($1 = 0.8881 euros)

Reporting by Christian Kraemer
Writing by Miranda Murray
Editing by Madeline Chambers

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