Weimar (dpa/th) - The recently drastically reduced opening hours of the remaining corona vaccination centers in Thuringia will not be extended again for the time being - with the exception of Erfurt and Gera. The demand for vaccinations against Covid-19 is currently rather low in Thuringia apart from the two cities, said the vaccination manager of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, Jörg Mertz, of the German Press Agency.
Until September 18, 14 vaccination centers will continue to be open half-day on Wednesday and Saturday. In the contact points in Erfurt and Gera, injections are also given on Fridays from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., although an appointment must be made beforehand.
Thuringia has halved the number of vaccination centers. According to previous plans, the remaining ones are to be closed by the end of the year. The office hours of those that are still open were reduced during the summer months of July and August. "If the demand increases again, we will react," said Mertz. It is unclear how the approval of vaccines that are adapted to the Omicron variants will affect demand.
In the case of corona vaccinations, the federal government plans to start with advanced vaccines for newer virus variants at the beginning of September. Around 14 million cans from Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna, which are adapted to the BA.1 variant, are expected to arrive in the two weeks starting September 5th. This emerges from a letter from Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). A spokesman for the KV has not yet been able to say how many doses of it are in Thuringia.
According to an overview by the Robert Koch Institute, around 71 percent of the population in Thuringia have received at least one injection against Covid-19. Almost 70 percent of the population have the basic immunization, which usually consists of two individual vaccinations. Around 53 percent got the first refresher, just around 4 percent the second.
