The town Cologne In its strategy for overcoming the corona crisis, it focuses on people and groups who live in poverty, cramped living conditions, precarious working conditions or socially disadvantaged areas. In the affected districts, the city makes special vaccination offers in the sense of “danger prevention”. The mayor explained the concept Henriette Reker on Friday as part of the federal press conference with the Minister of Health Jens Spahn and the head of the Robert Koch Institute Lothar Wieler.
Higher risk of infection in “vulnerable social spaces”
Reker coined the term “vulnerable social spaces”. When analyzing the infection situation in the 86 districts of Cologne, it was found that in some places there are “certain conditions for an increased risk of infection”. This includes the socio-spatial situation on site. In particular, living situations in which many people live in a confined space are “a main driver of infection”. These vulnerable social spaces in the affected city districts have therefore been given special attention as a “measure to avert danger”.
The aim is to mitigate or interrupt the infection dynamics in these districts and any possible spread dynamics in other parts of the city. With mobile teams, in consultation with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, people were given vaccination offers regardless of the prioritization, reports the mayor. This creates low-threshold vaccination offers – “in a central square in the district, right on the doorstep”.
Mobile vaccination teams and personal contact on site
Reker: “With this mobile vaccination offer, we have reached people for whom registering at a vaccination center or visiting a family doctor is a major hurdle.” This is accompanied by intensive communication and a “personal, native-language approach” from street workers or social workers, for example in the quarter.
An additional contingent of vaccination doses was received from the country for the local program. In addition, you equip it with overhang cans from the regular vaccination system. The capacities for this, however, remain small. Reker speaks of a “drop in the ocean”.
Curbing local infection dynamics protects the entire city
The Cologne project is, however, not undisputed: “There were discussions right from the start about whether it was fair to vaccinate in the vulnerable social areas and thus to remove priorities,” says Reker. However, it was possible to create a broad consensus in this regard in urban society.
“If we can get the infection numbers down there, it will help the whole city,” says the mayor. “We not only protect the residents who, due to their living situation, have a much higher risk of becoming infected and seriously ill, we also protect our health system and all of us.”
Spahn advocates vaccination options that are as low-threshold as possible
At the press conference, Spahn and Wieler emphasized the importance of vaccination progress for the success of the fight against the pandemic. It made him “confident” that more than ten million people in Germany had already been vaccinated twice, said the Minister of Health. Low-threshold vaccination offers like the one in Cologne are important in order to remove hurdles. “We want to make vaccination as easy as possible. Opportunity makes vaccination. “
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