RH criticizes the government – first too little, then too many doses of corona vaccine

At the start of the 2020 vaccine procurement, the Ministry of Health ordered fewer vaccine doses than Austria would have been entitled to according to the EU distribution key. Specifically, as of June 30, 2021, there were about 24.32 million Covid 19 vaccine doses, which was 3.36 million vaccine doses, i.e. twelve percent, below the “hypothetically possible order quantity”, as the report shows.

The vaccination rate for people who have been vaccinated for the first time could have been higher
The RH calculated the “impact of the federal government’s voluntary waiver of Covid-19 vaccines” on vaccination coverage in Austria in two variants. According to this, the vaccination rate of those who were vaccinated for the first time as of June 30, 2021 would have increased from 53.6 percent to 56.9 or 56.2 percent. According to the calculations of the RH, the rate for the second vaccinations could have increased from 35.3 percent to 37.4 or 37.0 percent at this point.

The extent to which these “hypothetically feasible” higher vaccination rates would have had medical, economic and social effects on pandemic management is “in light of the not clearly quantifiable effects on immunization, on the duration of vaccination protection, on minimizing the risk of (serious) course of illness and the number of hospital admissions ultimately remained unclear,” said the Court of Audit.

Commitments of EUR 1.085 billion
From October 2021 to the end of February 2022, the Ministry of Health then ordered about 15 million vaccine doses above the population key, as opposed to the initial phase. By February 2022, a total of about 70 million Covid 19 vaccine doses had been purchased – and that with a population of about 8.9 million, the RH recorded. The total cost framework and therefore the room for maneuver for the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines was increased between July 2020 and July 2021 from “up to 200 million euros” to “up to 1.252 billion euros”. In February 2022, the Ministry of Health had pledged €1.085 billion.

RH recommends that the Ministry set clearer rules
The Court therefore recommended, among other things, that the ministry clearly regulates the responsibilities for the procurement of vaccines and draws up an “understandable overall cost framework” for future projects in a timely manner and takes measures to ensure that the covid-19 vaccines expire or are disposed of in order to minimize possible to avoid. The RH saw it positively that there was a joint EU-wide vaccine procurement, that there was enough vaccine in Austria from June 2021 and that there were different vaccine technologies and manufacturers to spread the risk.

Ministry refutes the criticism
The Ministry of Health, in response to the RH report, pointed out that vaccine procurement had already been reorganized last year and that the measures the Court is now recommending had been taken “of their own accord”. These include more detailed needs calculations based on previous consumption, extra transparency in the National Vaccination Commission and in the decisions of the Council of Ministers, and more transfer of vaccines to third countries.

The “high order volumes in 2020 and 2021” were largely due to global uncertainty over the development of the pandemic, it said in a written statement. The constant adjustment of vaccination advice across Europe has also made it difficult to calculate the need.