“Germany cannot become the vaccine bazaar for foreign tourist groups while a large section of the population here is still waiting to be immunized.” The parent company of the Fdp in Bavaria, Martin Hagen, summarized the mood in Munich these days after the case of Forte Village, the Sardinian luxury resort that, with a blitz in Munich, had over a hundred employees vaccinated. The SPD also intervened on the case that is conquering the front pages of the newspapers: “Here the employees of the beautiful and the rich have been vaccinated while the unvaccinated remain hanging”, thundered the leader of the local SPD, Florian von Brunn. Even Dietmar Reiter, the Social Democratic mayor of Munich, the “red oasis” in the most conservative region of Germany, called for “full clarification”. But they are voices from the opposition. The CSU, which governs Bavaria, is silent. And it is not a case.
The Forte Village case comes at the wrong time and risks muddying an electoral campaign that is turning in favor of the CDU / CSU, above all because of the mistakes of the Greens. The news bounced from Italy of a charter that would have brought over a hundred Italian employees of the Sardinian luxury resort to Munich on May 21 to get them immunized, is the scandal that was not needed, for the CDU / Csu of Angela Merkel and Armin Laschet.
Forte Village candidly announced the blitz in a statement, proud to be able to reopen the season with its immunized employees. Even the Sardinian Union has titled that “All the staff of the Forte Village fly to Germany for the vaccine“. But the case broke out when the broadcast “Half an hour more” on Rai 3 interviewed the perpetrators last Sunday and it emerged that it was a completely illegal operation.
In Germany, the priority groups had not yet been suspended at the end of May: vaccine liberalization began on June 1st. The charter with vaccinators from Sardinia started on 21 May. And it is the first critical detail, which is making German commentators indignant. Furthermore, to be vaccinated in Germany, you must be a resident or have German medical insurance. This is obviously not the case with the employees of the Fort.
How did it happen that the doctors of Munich administered Biontech-Pfizer to a hundred Italians? For days in the German newspapers there has been a rebound between the Bavarian Ministry of Health, which tries to remove any suspicion from itself, and the increasingly embarrassed silence of the doctors and the protagonists of the story, Forte Village included.
But the answer is perhaps in an interview that the Rai 3 correspondent, Francisca De Candia, did with one of the doctors of the operation, Udo Beckenbauer, and which will be broadcast tomorrow by “Half an hour more”. In the interview, the German doctor claims that it was “the German government” that facilitated the operation. “For what reason – he adds – I don’t know. I was asked to do the vaccinations ”. And when De Candia presses on him, Beckenbauer confirms that the order has come from above, “because they go on vacation there”. Then she obviously realizes that she has said something she shouldn’t have said, and invites her interlocutor to forget what she has just said. But now it is difficult. Who in the German or Bavarian government authorized the blitz? This is the real question.
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