On 24 April 2026, in the early afternoon, Germany’s Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (PEI) — the federal agency for vaccines and biomedical medicines — posts from its official X account @PEI_Germany a card marking the end of European Immunisation Week. On the card: a cartoon family — mother, child, teenager, adult, elderly woman, male nurse in headscarf. Above it, in friendly green, with an exclamation mark:
The COVID-19 vaccination campaign was the largest immunization effort in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Within months, millions of people were vaccinated — initially voluntarily, then under increasing pressure. The Cologne Corona Protocols document how this pressure was enforced down to the municipal level. And they reveal a remarkable gap: the question of side effects.
In December 2020, Germany’s Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) launched the SafeVac 2.0 smartphone app. More than 700,000 people used it to report adverse reactions following COVID-19 vaccination. It was the largest vaccine safety study Germany had ever conducted.
