In Germany, eight people received a five-fold dose of Pfizer vaccine. In Stralsund, Germany, eight nursing home employees mistakenly received a five-fold dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, local authorities said.

The incident took place on Friday. Among the staff who received a five-fold dose of the drug, seven were women and one man. They were informed of the error and sent home.

‘From that moment on, they are in constant contact with the district health department,’ said in a message to the administration of the Western Pomerania-Rügen district, which includes Stralsund.

The head of the district administration, Stefan Kert, said that as a precautionary measure, four people are under in-patient supervision at the clinic. They developed ‘Covid-like symptoms.’

‘I deeply regret this incident. This isolated case is associated with an individual error. I wish everyone who was affected by the incident not to have severe side effects,’ Kert said.

The administration report also indicates that BioNTech, during the first phase of clinical trials, gave subjects larger doses of the vaccine than required, which they claim did not cause ‘severe consequences.’ (what counts as severe?).

‘There have been no long-term, unwanted effects reported. Local reactions at the injection site and systemic changes (mostly influenza-like symptoms) depended on the dose, as a rule, were temporary and mild to moderate,’ the report says.

In Germany, since December 27, as in other EU countries, mass vaccination of the population against Sars-CoV-2 with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has begun. The priority group of the campaign is people over 80 years old, residents and workers of nursing homes where mobile teams go, now vaccinations are mainly carried out there.

For the rest of the population in the country, more than 400 vaccination centres have been created on the basis of large facilities, such as exhibition complexes, stadiums, airports. The Stralsund incident is not the only one in the Federal Republic of Germany. In Bavaria, nine out of nearly 100 districts in this federal state were unable to start vaccinations on Sunday due to problems with the transportation of the vaccine.

The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine must be stored at low temperatures: in nine districts of Bavaria, employees of the Ministry of Health were unable to make sure that the temperature was observed and decided not to use the vaccine. Source, Source 2