Andreas Solaro AFP/Getty Images
BERLIN — Vaccinations with the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus shot resumed in the European Union’s three most populous nations on Friday, one day after the European medical regulator found it to be “safe and effective,” despite reports of rare blood clots as a potential side effect.
After a week-long suspension, European governments are hoping they can rebuild trust in the vaccine, which remains a key element of the E.U.’s inoculation strategy. French Prime Minister Jean Castex, 55, was among the first in the country to get the shot Friday afternoon, in what he said was a show of “complete confidence.” AstraZeneca vaccinations also resumed in Italy, Germany and several smaller countries.
But for many Europeans, the stoppage amplified doubts about a vaccine that has already faced months of contention related to its clinical trials and rollout.
“The anxiety and fear are great,” said Donatella Di Carlo, 49, a primary school teacher, who was among the thousands of people in Rome with an appointment Friday for the AstraZeneca jab. Di Carlo said she only decided to accept it because the risks of the virus — at a time when variants were spreading across the country — felt higher than those posed by the vaccine.
“My family doctor insisted I take it,” Di Carlo said. “She said it would be more dangerous not to take it.”
Thomas Coex
Reuters
French Prime Minister Jean Castex, 55, receives the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine at the Hopital d'Instruction des Armees Begin, in Saint-Mande, France, on Friday.
In a sign of more potential difficulties ahead, French Health Minister Olivier Véran said the country’s health advisory body was now recommending AstraZeneca vaccinations only for people age 55 or older. Just weeks ago, the same authority lifted a recommendation that only adults under 65 should receive the AstraZeneca shot.
French officials cited the European Medicines Agency assessment, which identified younger women as potentially at increased risk for rare blood clots in the days after vaccination.
The EMA, Europe’s drug regulator, concluded Thursday that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine far outweigh the risks. But the EMA also said it could not rule out a link to a small number of rare and unusual blood clot cases.
The World Health Organization gave another endorsement of the vaccine Friday, saying that it had a “tremendous potential to prevent infections and reduce deaths across the world.” The WHO said it was “not certain” that rare blood clotting events had a link to the vaccine.
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German scientists on Friday said they had identified an antibody response to the AstraZeneca vaccine as a likely cause, allowing them to develop a treatment.
Still, Denmark, Sweden and Norway said they were not yet ready to resume their AstraZeneca inoculations. “We need time to get to the bottom of this,” Soren Brostrom, director of the Danish Health Authority, said Friday.
AstraZeneca is not yet authorized in the United States. The results of a 32,000-person clinical trial are expected in the coming days or weeks, after which the company would apply to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization.
In Europe, contradictory political messaging, mishaps and negative PR related to the AstraZeneca shot and questions about the vaccine’s efficacy against variants have ingrained a degree of skepticism that will be hard to dispel.
According to a poll by the Elabe Institute published this week, almost 60 percent of the French said they do not trust the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, compared with 25 percent who said the same about the BioNTech-Pfizer shot.
The survey was conducted early this week, after the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had been suspended across many European countries.
Matteo Bazzi
EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Health-care staff prepare doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine inside the Museo della Scienza in Milan on Friday.
Unlike many of its European neighbors, Britain did not stop the vaccinations this week. But it, too, was feeling the impact of the fallout, with reports of uneasy patients calling to cancel or postpone their vaccine appointments.
Like Castex in France, Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to bolster confidence by getting the AstraZeneca jab himself on Friday. He received a first dose at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, where he spent a week as a patient with a serious case of covid-19 last year. As he left on Friday, Johnson told reporters he “literally did not feel a thing.” The prime minister, who was wearing a mask, gave a double thumbs-up to a news photographer.
Almost 40 percent of the British population is already partially vaccinated, compared with 8.4 percent in Italy, Germany and France.
European countries will not be able to reach their vaccination targets without reliance on AstraZeneca, which is the cheapest and easiest to store among the vaccines already approved by the bloc.
A week ago, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi chose to announce the country’s revised vaccination strategy at a Red Cross inoculation site constructed in an airport long-term parking lot. The site was giving out only AstraZeneca jabs.
“A place of hope,” Draghi called the facility.
But Friday, as it resumed offering the shot, people said they were nervous. They described days spent scrolling through social media, trying to make sense of media reports, talking to spouses and friends, consulting with family doctors about whether to accept the jab. Those who’d come had decided the risks were worth it. But several said they knew friends or colleagues whose minds had been changed by the stoppage and confusion.
Andreas Solaro
AFP/Getty Images
Italian Red Cross workers speak with a woman at the entrance of a vaccination center outside Rome's Termini train station Friday.
“Aren’t you afraid?” a student had asked junior high teacher Francesca Raso, 40, hours before she came to the airport.
“I don’t know if I’ll be sick or what will happen,” she said. “But clearly I have to do it.” Teaching her class via Zoom, with the region encompassing Rome again in lockdown, she told her students vaccination was an individual duty to help society “move forward.”
“I am doing this with conviction,” she said, “accepting the risks.”
The people who had appointments Friday were mostly midcareer workers: teachers, airport personnel and law enforcement. Antonio Babbo, a human resources worker for the airline Alitalia, said Europe’s “incremental” blunders, and a general lack of transparency, had made him worried.
“I’m only getting it because I feel like it might be a work-related handicap not to have it,” Babbo said.
In Berlin, Albrecht Broemme, the head of Berlin’s vaccination program, said it was hard to see the impact of the pause and blood clot concerns on vaccine uptake — only those who want to be vaccinated set up appointments. He said the city had missed doing about 6,000 shots due to the pause.
“Even one vaccination is a small step,” he said.
While the age groups being given AstraZeneca varied state-to-state in Germany on Friday, in Berlin the only change was that patients were given an extra warning to seek medical assistance if they had side effects for more than four days.
“On one side, I’m quite happy there’s no change,” Broemme said of the decision to press on with AstraZeneca vaccines. The inoculation from the British-Swedish company currently makes up the steadiest supply, he said.
“On the other side, I’m quite astonished with these decisions.”
As continental Europe lags behind on vaccinations, it is facing a third wave of the virus, accelerated by a more contagious strain first identified in the United Kingdom.
[While its AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccinations are suspended, Europe is confronting a third wave]
Paris and several other parts of France were entering a new lockdown Friday night, amid a surge in hospitalizations. The measures are expected to be in place for four weeks, with travel from the affected regions restricted and nonessential businesses closed.
Benoit Tessier
Reuters
People line up outside an H&M store on the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris, before the French capital was set to enter its third lockdown at midnight Friday.
In hopes of avoiding another lockdown, France sought to speed up vaccinations in recent weeks, deploying additional vaccine doses to hot spots, including to the Paris region — the economic heart of the country where almost a fifth of the French population lives.
But France’s efforts to ramp up vaccinations — still hampered by a supply crunch and public wariness of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine — may have been too little, too late.
The number of new coronavirus cases in the French capital region has surged sharply to more than 400 new cases per 100,000 people over seven days — more than three times higher than the current U.S. rate.
In Italy, where the rate has reached more than 260 new cases per 100,000, new lockdown restrictions came into effect Monday.
Germany’s rate is still far lower, with about 100 new cases per 100,000 people over seven days. But Health Minister Jens Spahn said this week that the worsening outlook could prompt a renewed tightening of rules.
Harlan reported from Rome. Loveday Morris in Berlin and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.
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