It is ten o’clock in the morning and it is pouring rain. Yet there is already a long queue for the ‘Impfmobil’ in the Kalk district of Cologne. With such mobile injection boxes, doctors go into disadvantaged neighborhoods to make the threshold for vaccinations as low as possible and to convince people.
The people in line are not to get grumpy: “I’m so happy that this is now possible. I have asthma, but my doctor couldn’t get an appointment. And now it’s my turn anyway,” says a woman. Only residents of Kalk are eligible. The Janssen vaccine is vaccinated, so that only one shot is needed. “This is so much faster than having to make an appointment all the way. My parents are also coming this afternoon,” says a boy in line.
Engaged drivers say: you cannot reach these people with flyers alone. Several German cities have therefore recently started to offer targeted vaccinations in districts where the infection numbers are high and the willingness to vaccinate is low.
Kalk is one of those ‘social Brennpunkte’. Many people live there on low incomes or on benefits. More than fifty percent of the inhabitants have a migration background. Cologne was the first German city to start jab campaigns in these neighbourhoods, when research showed that the infection rate there was sometimes ten times higher than in neighboring well-to-do neighbourhoods.
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