Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
The population of Germany is steadily losing faith in the federal government’s vaccination strategy, a new survey has found. Now just a fifth of Germans believe that the government will succeed in its aim to vaccinate the entire adult population by the end of summer.
According to a new survey, conducted by the opinion research institute INSA on behalf of Bild, the majority of people in Germany no longer trust the government’s vaccination strategy. Only a quarter of respondents said that they still have faith.
Even fewer people - just 21 percent of respondents - said they still believed the government’s promise that all adults in Germany will be offered a vaccine against COVID-19 by September 2021.
The survey suggested that this low level of trust in the federal government is having a knock-on effect on public attitudes towards vaccines. Almost one in four survey respondents (23 percent) indicated that they did not want to be vaccinated against the virus in the first place.
Specifically, the survey found that people in Germany have lost confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine - unsurprisingly given the government’s toing and froing on the issue in recent weeks, first stating that the vaccine was only suitable for the under-65s, then for everybody, then for nobody, then for everybody again, then for only the over-60s.
35 percent of the population say they no longer trust the active ingredient in the AstraZeneca vaccine, while 26 percent say they never trusted it. Just 28 percent say they would be vaccinated with AstraZeneca. 40 percent say they would be vaccinated with a different vaccine, but specifically not with AstraZeneca.
Even more concerningly, 34 percent of survey respondents now indicate that they even distrust the European Medicines Agency (EMA), whose own advice that AstraZeneca is safe and effective for all population groups now contradicts the federal government’s position.
Germany has always held up the EMA as a model of competence, and as an explainer as to why the vaccination process has been slower in Europe - specifically to make everything safer. The survey suggests that this divergence of position is harming the reputation of both institutions.