Ministry of Health: Germany still has to buy around 16 million vaccine doses from manufacturers / Actual quantities administered indicate oversupply / Robert Koch Institute still recommends coronavirus preparations as the “standard vaccination”
Source: Multipolar, 10 September 2025
Berlin: The German government is continuing to purchase millions of doses of coronavirus mRNA preparations. When asked by Multipolar, the press office of the Federal Ministry of Health announced that Germany is still expecting around 15.6 million doses of the mRNA vaccine from BioNTech and Pfizer and around 365,000 doses of a protein vaccine from the manufacturer Novavax “for the 2025/26 vaccination season”. The legal basis for this are the supply contracts “concluded by the European Commission” during the coronavirus crisis. In addition, around 5.5 million doses from the manufacturer BioNTech/Pfizer (mRNA vaccine, adapted to the KP.2 and JN.1 variants) are currently (as at the end of August 2025) stored in the federal government’s central warehouse. Until the expiry date is reached, the centrally procured COVID-19 vaccines will be stored “in case of supply relevance”, explained the Ministry of Health.
Critics are already assuming a massive oversupply of coronavirus vaccines: According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), only around 4.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in Germany between the beginning of July 2023 and the end of June 2024. In March, the German Medical Journal reported that the federal government was no longer purchasing any more COVID-19 vaccines. At that time, there were still seven million doses in the federal government’s central warehouse. However, due to the participation in the EU Commission’s vaccine initiative, there were still purchase obligations for preparations from the manufacturers BioNTech and Novavax. According to the Ministry of Health, these would be made available free of charge until at least 2026.
According to the German Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), the current vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech and Pfizer and adapted to the SARS-CoV-2 variant LP.8.1 will be made available free of charge by the federal government from mid-September. The marketing authorisation was recommended by the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in July for all persons aged six months and over and was subsequently approved by the EU Commission.
The KBV reported that “with the availability of the Comirnaty vaccine products adapted to LP.8.1”, the federal government is “discontinuing deliveries” of the vaccine products adapted to the JN.1 and KP.2 virus variants. It referred to information from the Centre for Pandemic Vaccines and Therapeutics (ZEPAI) at the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI). When asked, the Ministry of Health clarified to Multipolar that the delivery stop only related to the older BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines. The manufacturer Novavax “still only supplies the vaccine adapted to the JN.1 variant”. According to the recommendations of the WHO and the EMA, this is still suitable for the 2025/26 vaccination season and will be available for doctors’ surgeries.
Officially, the supply contracts negotiated by the EU Commission with the manufacturers in November 2020 are only partially accessible to the public and only with redacted passages. Even members of the EU Parliament’s Health Committee are being denied access to the files. The RKI currently recommends coronavirus vaccinations as a “standard vaccination” for all people over the age of 60 and people aged between 18 and 59 “with incomplete basic immunity”. This also includes “women of childbearing age and healthy pregnant women“.
