Berlin throws party to drum up vaccine tempo

It's a typical Berlin scene: a long line of sharply dressed people waiting around the corner to get into a club.

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The thud of music from inside the venue, strict entry controls and the chance of waking up with a headache the morning after are all familiar, too.

Only, on a rainy evening in the east Berlin neighborhood of Alt-Treptow, the draw isn't just dance music but vaccines as well.

The German capital renowned for its clubbing scene is throwing three vaccination parties this week, giving patrons jabs to the sound of electronic music.

The site is Arena club - which had been transformed into one of Berlin's five main vaccination centers over the last year, after it, like other similar venues, was forced shut to curb coronavirus transmission.

After delivering well over a million jabs a day at its peak, Germany is now seeing the takeup for inoculation against the coronavirus slow dramatically, according to figures from the Robert Koch Institute for disease control and prevention.

In a bid to incentivize more to take the jab, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Aug. 10 agreed with regional leaders to end free Covid tests from October 11.

In the Arena club, the scene is like a high-school disco with very limited dancing. Patients who have just had their vaccines sit spaced out on chairs under strobing lights, while one of the DJs - some of them well known figures of Berlin's underground and some who have volunteered in the vaccination center itself - works away on a set of turntables.

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Some are in full party gear, others in their regular clothes.

The idea to combine dance music and vaccines was hatched by Markus Nisch, the Arena vaccination center manager for the German Red Cross.

"We...