Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
With vaccination rates dipping across the country, some federal states are turning to creative means to get jabs into people’s arms. From today, Berlin is offering walk-in vaccine appointments in three vaccination centres - no appointment required.
In a bid to speed up the state’s vaccination rollout, Germany’s capital city will be opening up drop-in vaccine clinics in three centres across the city, allowing residents to get vaccinated against coronavirus without having to register in advance.
From Friday, July 23, residents of Berlin will be able to get vaccinated without an appointment every day between the hours of 2 and 5 pm at three vaccination centres - the one in Tegel, the exhibition grounds (Messe) in Charlottenburg, and the Erika Heß stadium in Wedding. The offer will last for the next four weeks, initially.
“We are preparing to receive many spontaneous vaccination guests from Friday in the afternoons, and would be pleased if lots of Berliners take advantage of this vaccination offer,” Corona-Impfzentrum Messe Berlin told broadcaster RBB24. In order to get vaccinated, you need to be registered in Berlin and bring some form of ID such as an identity card or a passport with you.
Other pop-up clinics are also being held in the city, such as that at the Ikea car park in Lichtenberg (every day between 11 am and 9 pm) and at Rathaus Neukölln (Fridays between 10 am and 5 pm).
With demand for vaccinations waning in many places, Germany is preparing to close its mass vaccination centres and move to more community-driven solutions. Recently, data has shown that as many as 20 percent of people have failed to show up to vaccine appointments in centres in Hesse and Berlin.
According to the Ministry of Health, vaccination centres in Thuringia are only half-full, and in Baden-Württemberg the number of first vaccinations delivered in local centres has recently plummeted by 70 percent.
This low occupancy rate - and the fact that the centres are expensive to run - means that more and more vaccination centres are closing. Bavaria shut down its first centres last week, and also reduced capacity at the remaining centres. Berlin closed its Tempelhof centre on Wednesday, with three more locations to follow by the end of August. Of Thuringia’s four vaccination centres, only the one in Erfurt is to remain open after the summer.