Vaccination debacle in Germany exacerbates spread of new variants Well over 100 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, and more than 2.2 million have died from it. In Germany, nearly 57,000 have fallen victim to the virus so far. One year after the outbreak of the pandemic, the situation continues to deteriorate. The much invoked “light at the end of the tunnel,” the vaccination of the population, is proving to be a real debacle. The EU and the German government have not bothered to provide the vaccine in sufficient quantities for all of Europe. Instead, they have entrusted this to private pharmaceutical companies worth billions. The vaccine manufacturers—BionTech-Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca—promised huge supplies to win the lucrative EU contracts; now they cannot fulfil them at all.