What will become of the Corona vaccination portal for online appointments? Medical practices can still offer appointments here. In some places, the online search is in vain, practices prefer to organize this themselves.
Weimar (dpa/th) – The Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians has put plans on hold to also use the central website for corona vaccinations to make appointments online for other vaccinations. This was technically prepared for the flu vaccination, said KV pandemic staff leader Jörg Mertz on request. “But we’re not going to pursue that any further.” The need for it is not there. In the event that excess flu vaccine accumulates in doctor’s offices, the KV had considered forwarding vaccination appointments via the site. For a small federal state, however, this is apparently not practicable, according to Mertz.
The online appointment system was primarily set up for the central vaccination centers in Bavaria, which gradually went into operation at the beginning of 2021. It was later expanded to include medical practices. The vaccination centers in Thuringia are now closed, and the corona vaccination is now in the hands of resident doctors. You still have the option of offering appointments via the portal. There are currently more than 5,000 appointments available in practices across the country.
According to the KV, the practices make very different use of the central online appointment system depending on the region. This is currently most likely to be the case in larger cities such as Erfurt or Jena, but only occasionally. Many doctors in private practice prefer to organize their vaccination appointments themselves and do not post them on the portal.
According to Mertz, this also has to do with the fact that they do not want to risk letting the vaccine expire. For example, the vials supplied were sufficient for ten syringes each for the vaccine from the manufacturer Biontech, he said. “For that, the practices have to get the people together first, that’s difficult.” These problems already existed in the initial phase of the corona vaccination campaign.
According to an overview by the Robert Koch Institute, only a few thousand corona vaccinations were administered nationwide in the first week of January. In October and November it was sometimes up to around 145,000 a day.
