[ The European Medicines Agency seems likely to pronounce the shot safe. But will anyone want to take it after this week’s panic?]
By Roger Cohen
“I
feel like we are being used as guinea pigs,” said Khady Ballo, 21, a law
student in the southern French town of Montpellier. “I would not get the
AstraZeneca vaccine even if it is approved again.”
Although
it seems likely that the European Medicines Agency, the 27-member union’s top
drug regulator, will quickly pronounce the AstraZeneca vaccine safe, millions
of Europeans have been shaken by the back-and-forth and will be more hesitant
about vaccination.
“Before
this, I was so pro-vaccines I would have dipped children into them,” said Maria
Grazia Del Pero, 62, who works in tourism in Milan. But now, “I would not get
AstraZeneca because that would be like playing Russian roulette.”
Providing
vaccines for the E.U.’s 450 million people was never going to be a simple task,
especially as the union hardly had a coordinated health policy before the
pandemic. But bureaucratic delay and confusion in procuring vaccines from
pharmaceutical companies, followed by slow authorization, followed by delivery
problems, followed by the
sudden panic over the AstraZeneca shot, has left European governments on
the defensive and Europeans reeling.
In
France, the government has swerved from lauding the AstraZeneca inoculation a
few days ago to suspending it. The reaction to this confusion was swift, even
if the government insists there is no established medical cause for fear. A
poll by the Elabe Institute published Tuesday showed that only 20 percent of
French people now trust the AstraZeneca vaccine, with 58 percent skeptical, and
22 percent undecided.
“I
trust AstraZeneca, I trust the vaccines,” Ursula von der Leyen, the top
European Union official, said at a news conference in Brussels. But reassuring
words may not persuade Europeans experiencing policy whiplash.
In
a clear attempt to shore up shaken confidence, Jean Castex, the French prime
minister, told BFM TV he would himself get the AstraZeneca vaccine “as soon as
the green light is given.” He had not previously spoken of doing this.
“The
trust of Italians is deeply compromised, not only toward the AstraZeneca
vaccine but also toward the authorities,” Roberto Burioni, a leading Italian
virologist, said. “These sudden and inexplicable changes in decisions create
concerns everywhere.” Even an “all good” verdict from the European Medicines
Agency, likely Thursday, “will not be enough.”
Concerns
about the shot are based on a small number of recipients who developed blood
clots or abnormal bleeding. But researchers and drug regulators say they have
seen no evidence of an increase in such complications or a connection to the
inoculation.
AstraZeneca said this week that a review of more than
17 million people who had received its vaccine found that they were actually
less likely than the general population to develop dangerous clots.
European
countries, led by France and Germany, have been torn between a strong desire to
avoid what they call “vaccination nationalism,” and the realization that the
European Union was not fully prepared for an operation on this scale. If
integration of the bloc’s health policy has been fast-forwarded, with possible
long-term benefits, lives have also been lost.
The
sight of Britain powering ahead with vaccinations — more than 26 million doses
have been given, more than three times the number in France — has been
particularly galling, given its recent exit from the union. Some Europeans
understandably ask why.
Trust
has long been a central issue in France, where skepticism toward Covid-19
vaccines late last year was widespread. In December less than half the
population said it was ready to be vaccinated.
That
number, according to a poll by Harris Interactive, had risen to 64 percent
earlier this month, before the AstraZeneca setback. Even then, however, trust
in the AstraZeneca vaccine was lower, at 43 percent of the population, a number
now halved.
The
situation is scarcely better in Germany, although its death rate from the virus
has been lower than France’s. “Stopping the AstraZeneca maximizes the damage to
its image that has plagued the German vaccination strategy from the beginning,”
Ulrich Weigeldt, the head of the German Association of General Practitioners,
told the Funke media group. “Vaccination is and remains a question of trust.”
Confidence
in the vaccine remains fairly high in Britain, where millions of people have
received it, and even on the continent, many Europeans seem untouched by the
AstraZeneca fears. “I would definitely get the AstraZeneca vaccine if approved
again,” said Corinne Taddei, 60, a karate instructor in Paris. The Covid vaccines,
she said, are “the only solution to save us and get out of this pandemic.”
Maria
Paraskevoula, a 52-year-old teacher in Athens, was also unbowed. “I’ll take any
vaccine, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, I don’t care. From what I’ve heard, the chances
of any problems are minimal. There’s always a risk but isn’t a bigger risk to
walk around waiting to get infected?”
Last
week, when reports surfaced that two men in Sicily, an Italian naval officer
and a police officer, had died shortly after taking the AstraZeneca shot, the
website of the Tuscany region registered 4,100 cancellations for the
AstraZeneca vaccine in a day, roughly 12 percent of the people booked for the
week ahead. In a few days, however, the vacancies were filled by other
residents.
The
disarray comes at a difficult moment with Europe facing what Mr. Castex, the
French prime minister, has called “a kind of third wave” from new variants of
the virus, even as exhaustion and depression have set in, along with severe
hardship. Europe’s eventual economic recovery from the pandemic is set to be
much slower than the American.
With
the national mood restive, and a presidential election next year, the French
government is wavering between further lockdowns and suggestions that by April
15 restaurants may start to open and a curfew be eased.
Its
target of having 10 million people vaccinated with at least a first shot by
mid-April, as compared to 5.6 million today, now looks ambitious given the
fallout from the AstraZeneca panic. But French authorities insist it can be
done, even if the AstraZeneca vaccine has to be withdrawn.
More
than a year from the first lockdowns around Europe, an end to the crisis seems no
closer. “I was never a No-Vaxxer,” said Laura Cerchi, a teacher at an
elementary school on the outskirts of Florence who had her first shot of
AstraZeneca in early March. “But all this confusion had me wondering whether I
want to do the second shot or not. The mixed messages are not boosting my
confidence in vaccines.”
In
an interview, Clément Beaune, France’s junior minister for European Affairs,
defended European policy. “I don’t believe that it’s European weightiness that
is slowing down our vaccination process. Do we have problems in Europe? Yes.
Would we — France, Germany — resolve these better at a national level waging
war to obtain vaccine doses? I do not believe so.”
Reporting
was contributed by Gaëlle Fournier, Aurelien Breeden and Constant Méheut from
Paris; Melissa Eddy from Berlin; Emma Bubola from Milan, Italy; Gaia Pianigiani
from Siena, Italy; and Niki Kitsantonis from Athens.
