The German government is facing awkward questions about why the country that developed the first approved Covid-19 vaccine has so few supplies of the jab, with vaccination rates in Germany lagging far behind the US, UK and Israel.

Jens Spahn, the health minister, pleaded with Germans to have patience. “Throughout the world, supplies of the vaccine are tight,” he told reporters on Wednesday. But he insisted that the situation would ease as more vaccines were approved.

Germans have been angered by statistics showing that more than 640,000 people have already received the Covid-19 jab in Israel, compared with only 78,000 in Germany. Rates of inoculation are also much higher in the UK, which started vaccinations earlier than the EU, and the US. Yet Germany is the home of BioNTech, which developed the Covid-19 vaccine together with Pfizer.