‘We are a laughing stock’: Covid-19 and Germany’s political malaise

Steffen Bockhahn does not mince his words when it comes to Germany’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign. “We are the laughing stock of the world,” he says. “Germany was supposed to be world champion at organising things, and look at us.” Bockhahn heads the social affairs department of Rostock, a north-eastern port which has set up a massive vaccination centre housed in an exhibition hall on the outskirts of the city. The complex has the capacity to administer 2,100 jabs a day. A shortage of vaccine doses means it’s currently doing less than half of that. Germans have been grumbling about the slow pace of inoculations for weeks now: so far, only 11 per cent of the population have received at least one dose, compared with 45 per cent in the UK, 29 per cent in the US and 60 per cent in Israel, according to the latest Our World in Data figures.