BRUSSELS (AP) – With coronavirus cases rising in many places, governments faced the worst dilemma on Tuesday: coming up with a vaccine that is known to save lives or suspending the use of AstraZeneca due to reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients, even when the European regulator said there was “no indication” that the shot was responsible.
This created an uneven divide across the world, forcing politicians to assess the health risks of stopping vaccines at a time when many countries, especially in Europe, are already struggling to overcome logistical obstacles and vaccination hesitation among their populations.
Sweden was the last to join a growing group of European Union nations preferring caution over speed, even when the head of the European Medicines Agency said the agency is “firmly convinced” that the benefits of the AstraZeneca shot outweigh the risks.
Emer Cooke noted on Tuesday that thousands of people across the EU develop thrombosis every year for a variety of reasons and that there have been no reports of increased blood clots in clinical studies of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Still, experts will do a “very rigorous analysis” and make a recommendation on Thursday, she said.
Europe has the luxury of being able to choose from several vaccine candidates – but the decision is not yet easy on the continent, where the virus is emerging again and where the vaccination campaign has been stumbling repeatedly.
The choice may be even more complicated elsewhere, because many countries are heavily dependent on AstraZeneca, which is cheaper and easier to handle than some other vaccines. The vaccine has so far played a large role in the global initiative to ensure that vaccines reach the poorest countries, known as COVAX.
The difficulty of the decision was made clear in Thailand, the first country outside Europe to temporarily suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, only to retract it on Tuesday – when its prime minister received a dose.
“There are people who are concerned,” said Prayuth Chan-ocha after receiving the injection. “But we must believe in doctors, believe in our medical professionals.”
Many other countries in Asia have also ignored concerns, although Indonesia suspended the use of the injection this week, saying it would wait for a World Health Organization report on the matter.
In addition to EMA, AstraZeneca and WHO said there was no evidence that the vaccine carries an increased risk of blood clots. There have been 37 reports of blood clots among the more than 17 million people who received the vaccine in the EU and Britain, the company said.
“This is much smaller than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar in other licensed COVID-19 vaccines,” said the Anglo-Swedish pharmacist.
But the number of countries in the bloc that persist with the shot is dropping after heavyweights like Germany, Italy, France and Spain said they were suspending it.
That left Belgium – and a handful of others like Poland, Romania and Greece – increasingly isolated in its insistence that stopping the shots now would do much more harm than the side effects so hotly debated now.
“When you know how the virus is circulating, it would be very unwise to stop,” Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke told the VRT network on Tuesday.
Experts noted that such concerns are unavoidable in mass vaccination campaigns – with so many people taking vaccines, some can get sick, even if the vaccine is not to blame. That would mean “we’d have to cease campaigns ceaselessly for the next few months,”
“We wanted to remain as scientific as possible in the political-media turmoil that is currently shaking Europe,” said Belgian virologist Yves Van Laethem.
In Spain, which announced the suspension of the vaccine on Monday, some medical experts doubted the measure. Amós García, president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology, said that countries were being overzealous in suspending the use of AstraZeneca.
And the decisions seemed to have a snowball effect. “There is a cross-border contagion effect,” said Garcia.
“Anything triggers the principle of caution,” García told Spanish broadcaster TVE. “Once it starts it’s like a domino, it becomes very difficult for a country to continue applying the vaccine”, if others stop, even if it is just in case.
With the flood of decisions casting doubts about the AstraZeneca vaccine, despite expert assurances, public opinion has been tested once again to believe the science about the suspicion.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said the Balkan country will not stop using Astra-Zeneca vaccines and insisted that “unfortunately, some people are changing their minds because of a negative campaign”.
With so much disorderly frequency during the vaccination campaign, the 27 EU countries have once again strayed, with each member state making its own decision, while the Executive Committee asked everyone to pay attention to EMA advice. When asked whether EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would get the AstraZeneca vaccine, its spokesman Eric Mamer said “of course”.
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Jordans reported from Berlin. AP reporters around the world contributed to this report.
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