Pandemic of the unvaccinated hits Germany

BERLIN • The University Hospital of Giessen, one of Germany's foremost clinics for pulmonary disease, is at capacity. The number of Covid-19 patients has tripled in recent weeks.

Nearly half of them are on ventilators. And every single one has not been vaccinated.

"I ask every patient: Why didn't you get vaccinated?" said Dr Susanne Herold, head of infectious diseases, after her ward round on 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.

It is a startling turnabout for Germany. At the pandemic's onset, it had set an example for how to manage Covid-19 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 scientist, whose government's social distancing guidelines were widely observed.

But today, a combination of factors has propelled a new surge, among them wintry temperatures, a slow roll-out of booster vaccines, and an even more pronounced spike in infections in neighbouring eastern European nations like the Czech Republic.

Experts in viruses and pandemics say there is little doubt that it is the unvaccinated who are contributing most to the wave of infections burdening hospitals.

"It's our low rate of vaccination; we haven't done what was necessary," said Dr Herold. She was part of a team of scientists who modelled the impact of a fourth wave and warned that with the hyper-contagious Delta variant, at least 85 per cent of the population must be vaccinated to avert a crisis in the healthcare system. "We are still below 70 per cent," she said. "I don't know how we can win this race against time with the fourth wave. I fear we've already lost."

Germany's vaccination rate is low because of pockets of vaccine resistance that are not limited to but are especially deep in the former communist east, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is strong.

Mr Tino Chrupalla and Ms Alice Weidel, leaders of the AfD's parliamentary group, are both proudly unvaccinated - and both tested positive for the virus recently.

"What we are experiencing is above all a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Health Minister Jens Spahn said this month.

Cases have also spiked in parts of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg, 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," Bavaria's governor Markus Soder said in a TV debate. "We have coronavirus, and we have this poison, which is being spread on a massive scale," he said, referring to vaccine misinformation.

Mr Klaus-Peter Hanke knows about that poisonous propaganda first-hand. He is the mayor of Pirna, a town of less than 40,000 in the eastern state of Saxony, which saw violent protests from anti-vaxxers in the final days of the lockdown last spring.

Just under half of Pirna 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.

"We tried to counter that with dialogue. But there is a point where you hit a wall, and you just can't get any further, and one result is that it has escalated," Mr Hanke said.

Chancellor Merkel said on Thursday that people who are still not vaccinated as the fourth wave takes hold in Germany must understand they have a duty to the rest of society to protect others. "We have to make it clear that I have the right to get vaccinated, and that is a great fortune, a huge achievement of science and technology," she said in a video link. "But I also have a certain obligation to contribute to protecting society."

While many of the unvaccinated are in age groups that are statistically likely to have less severe Covid-19, they can pass the virus to older people with weaker immune systems, who can then end up in intensive care even if they are vaccinated.

NYTIMES, REUTERS