Governments across Europe rushed on Friday to suspend suspensions of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine and reassure an exhausted and anxious public that it was safe in the midst of a new wave of infections that has led many countries to re-enforce severe restrictions on movement and business.
German officials have warned that plans to ease restrictions by Easter may need to be suspended and said more measures may be needed in the coming weeks. Paris was one of many cities across France where people were essentially forced to stay at home. Italy entered its third national block on Monday, and Poland will put in place its own block on Saturday.
Rapid measures to tighten what were already relatively strict restrictions occurred when almost all countries in Europe that stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine – including France, Germany, Italy and Spain – said they would start using it again.
But the brief suspension of vaccine use underscored the slow pace of mass inoculation campaigns, prompting authorities to warn that the only way to control the virus was to impose restrictions.
A year after the start of the pandemic, the routine is now exasperatingly familiar in Europe.
Infection cases start to increase. Restrictions are tightened and society is paralyzed, but when people are once again essentially confined to their homes, hospitals are crowded. Death follows.
Across Europe, the official death toll rose from 900,000 last week, according to the World Health Organization. But this spring, it was supposed to be different.
Vaccines are being launched, albeit at a slow pace. They are effective. They can prevent serious illness and death. But for the vast majority of people in Europe and around the world, they are terribly out of reach.
The latest outbreaks are a stark reminder that not enough people have been inoculated to seriously reduce the impact of a new wave of infection spreading across the continent, so governments are once again being forced to tighten already difficult restrictions on companies and social interactions.
“There are still not enough vaccine doses in Europe to prevent the third wave just by vaccination,” said Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, on Friday. “Even if EU order deliveries are reliable, it will still be a few weeks before risk groups are fully vaccinated.”
Mass vaccination efforts across the European Union were launched into deeper turbulence this week, as more than a dozen countries have suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine while reporting a possible link to a small number of blood clots and bleeding cases abnormal was investigated.
On Thursday, the bloc’s medical regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said its review concluded that the vaccine was “safe and effective”. While continuing to look for connections to the disturbances, the agency noted that any threat would be very small and that the shots will prevent many more deaths than they can cause.
Political leaders rushed to try to undo any damage to the public’s trust and faith in AstraZeneca and vaccines more broadly – with several of them rolling up their sleeves and applying their own shots to clarify the situation.
In France, where skepticism about the vaccine is deep, Jean Castex, the 55-year-old prime minister of the country, showed his thumb to the television cameras after getting your first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine at a military hospital in the Val-de-Marne area, south-east of Paris.
Although the French resumed administering the vaccine, the main health regulator recommended it only for people aged 55 and over, as blood disorders were detected in people under the age of that. He said that, for now, other vaccines should be used for younger people.
Lithuania also returned to using AstraZeneca vaccines on Friday, and the country’s president, prime minister and health minister were scheduled to get vaccines on Monday.
Although faith in AstraZeneca remains high in Britain, where the vaccine was developed in partnership with researchers at Oxford University, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had his chance on Friday, while trying to reassure millions of people in the country that has already they had received it.
Still, some countries have said they need more time to investigate, including Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
In Norway, caution was driven by preliminary findings from medical experts there and in Germany, who suggested that they could have found a link between the vaccine and extremely rare blood disorders. German experts said the sinus or cerebral venous thrombosis suffered by 13 Germans days after receiving the vaccine was caused by an immune system reaction that they believe to be related to the injection. They have not released detailed data, but plan to send their findings to The Lancet.
AstraZeneca did not immediately comment on the statements on Friday.
Dr. James Bussel, a specialist in platelet disorders and professor emeritus at Weill Cornell Medicine, said the occurrence of abnormal clotting and low platelets in people under 50 is unusual. He noted that researchers in Europe have identified antibodies produced by the immune system – possibly in a highly unusual response to the vaccine – that may have activated platelets and initiated an abnormal clotting and bleeding cascade.
Researchers in Germany and Norway will continue to investigate and in Germany, where the vaccine is being administered again, doctors are alerting anyone who receives an injection of AstraZeneca to see a doctor immediately if they have headaches, dizziness or blurred vision more than three days later. They said the problems could probably be addressed if detected in time.
And on Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel joined other European leaders in an attempt to reassure the public, telling reporters that she would have no qualms about taking a picture of AstraZeneca, but that she was waiting for her turn, according to the system. prioritization of Germany.
But the challenge for leaders in much of Europe is much deeper than restoring faith in a vaccine. They now need to find a way to provide more vaccines to the people who need them most, at a time when the virus is once again claiming about 2,000 lives a day.
France reported nearly 40,000 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, according to a New York Times database – the highest number since November, when a second wave of infection forced the entire country into confinement.
Last week, health officials in Paris ordered hospitals to cancel many of their procedures to make room for patients with Covid-19. And this week some patients were moved to other regions to ease the pressure on hospitals.
Companies deemed non-essential are being forced to close, outdoor activities are limited to a six-mile radius from a person’s home and travel to other regions is prohibited. Schools will remain open, but basically everything else must stop.
With less than 10 percent of the population having received at least one dose of the vaccine, Bruno Riou, head of the crisis center at public hospitals in Paris, said that a blockade was the only remaining option.
“I hear a lot of people saying that a week without a block is a week to be won,” said Riou. “For me, it’s a lost week.”
Across Europe more broadly, promises to ease restrictions by Easter are now being reversed. In Germany, where cases are rising rapidly, Merkel warned that the country was facing the possibility of a tougher blockade and that a decision would be taken on Monday.
She said that a planned reduction in restrictions in some states, including opening stores and allowing more people to meet, may have to be postponed, even when Germans are eagerly awaiting Easter holidays.
Thomas Hale, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Oxford who leads a research group that tracks coronavirus restrictions around the world, said it is remarkable how similar the pattern that is occurring in Europe in recent days has been the situation this year. previous.
“A big question is whether people will do it again in the spring of 2021 what they did in the spring of 2020,” he said.
The report was contributed by Constant Mehut in Paris, Melissa Eddy in Berlin, Denise Grady in New York and Rebecca Robbins in Bellingham, Washington.