Finance Minister Scholz said it was "very angry" that many Covid-19 vaccines were not ordered by 2020 due to a decision by the European Commission.

European Union (EU) countries have so far only injected the first Covid-19 vaccine for less than 4% of the population, lower than the 11% rate in the US and nearly 17% in the UK, according to Our statistics.

"I am very angry about some of the decisions that were made last year," German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told the BBC on February 6.

When asked about von der Leyen's responsibility for the Covid-19 vaccine delay, Minister Scholz said "anyone needs a lesson and this is true for Europe, I think the EU is very strong"

Scholz is a Social Democrat and von der Leyen of the Christian Democrats will serve together in Germany's ruling coalition until 2019, when von der Leyen stops serving as its deputy head to assume office.

In an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper on Jan. 31, von der Leyen said it was "wrong" to say that signing earlier contracts would speed up the vaccine delivery process of manufacturers.

"The bottleneck lies elsewhere. Producing a new vaccine is an incredibly complex process," writes von der Leyen, "of the hundreds of ingredients needed for vaccines, important things are missing.

Von der Leyen described the fight against Covid-19 "not a sprint but a marathon", and expressed concern about new nCoV strains.

Covid-19 broke out in December 2019, appeared in 219 countries and territories with nearly 106 million cases, more than 2.3 million deaths, and nearly 78 million people recovered.