Halixin
Vaccinating people inside an underground garage
A student-led COVID-19 vaccination initiative · Aachen, 2021
Where the Initiative Started
In spring 2021, students at the Halifax dormitory were still living with strict COVID-19 limits and delayed access to vaccines for their age group. The dormitory housed hundreds of students in dense living conditions - apartments had 2-4 people (mostly 4) sharing common spaces - which posed a significant exposure risk. Meanwhile, the vaccination rollout was slow and students weren't prioritized, forcing them to wait behind vulnerable groups.
Paul Schwab and Malte Reddig focused on one goal: get vaccinations to students quickly and safely, directly where they lived, instead of waiting for large public rollout timelines.
That focus turned the Halifax underground garage into a temporary vaccination site and laid the groundwork for the full Halixin vaccination initiative.
What Happened
None of this would have been possible without Praxis Henne & Ries. The doctors there not only recognized the risk students faced living in close quarters, but actively sought a way to help - reaching out with an extraordinary offer: 400 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines, if Paul Schwab and Malte Reddig could organize enough students within a week.
Praxis Henne & Ries provided the medical expertise, the vaccines, and the professional oversight that made a student-run initiative safe and credible. Their willingness to trust and support students turned an idea into reality. The Halifax Vaccination Initiative - Halixin - was born.
Over the course of the campaign, they vaccinated over 450 people in the underground garages of the Halifax dormitory. The underground garage, usually home to bicycles and storage, became a temporary vaccination center.
To make the second round even more successful, Malte built an online management platform that handled the entire operation: sending notifications to students about vaccination dates, scheduling and managing appointment slots, collecting confirmation of attendance, offering vaccine choice between AstraZeneca and BioNTech, and live tracking how many students had been vaccinated during each vaccination day.
Eight weeks later, they organized a follow-up: BioNTech vaccinations for everyone who had received AstraZeneca. This cross-vaccination was the recommended approach in Germany at the time, providing stronger immunity. The IT system made the second round equally smooth.
The initiative demonstrated what students could organize when given the opportunity.
The Team
Paul Schwab
Co-organizer
Paul co-organized the entire Halixin campaign - from coordinating with the medical practice to managing logistics on vaccination days.
Malte Reddig
Co-organizer
Malte co-organized Halixin alongside Paul and handled digital coordination, scheduling, communication, and follow-up data collection.
Praxis Henne & Ries
Medical supervision & vaccine provider
The medical practice that recognized the opportunity, supplied the AstraZeneca and BioNTech doses, and medically supervised the initiative from start to finish.
Thank you, Halifax Volunteers
Dormitory volunteers
A huge thank you to the Halifax dormitory volunteers who helped us on site - guiding people, coordinating queues, answering questions, and making the vaccination days actually work in practice.