BERLIN – At the beginning of the year, many Germans complained about the scarcity of vaccines against the coronavirus that could free them from costly blocks and limited social life. A few weeks later, many are upset that they are not getting the vaccine they want.
While people around the world are clamoring for inoculations, and many countries have seen severe shortages, the preference for a vaccine developed by the German company BioNTech with Pfizer is causing a vaccination in Germany of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca, a Swedish-British company, according to state health authorities.
Many people – including healthcare professionals – are skipping appointments or refusing to sign up for the AstraZeneca injection, which they fear will be less effective than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, officials say. As a result, two weeks after the first delivery of 1.45 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Germany, only 270,986 were administered, according to data collected by the public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute.
“The point is that we have a market-leading German-made product, but we can’t get it,” said Michael Breiden, 53, a night nurse at a mental hospital in North Rhine-Westphalia. . He said he would prefer the injection of Pfizer-BioNTech, but would accept the injection of AstraZeneca if it meant immunizing more quickly.
The rejection of the AstraZeneca vaccine was fueled by weeks of negative coverage of it in the German media, which portrayed it as “second class”, citing its lower rate of effectiveness compared to Pfizer-BioNTech, and reporting stories of people suffering from illness adverse reactions.
Clinical trials suggest that the effectiveness of Pfizer, at 95 percent, is greater than that of AstraZeneca, which is between 60 and 90 percent depending on factors such as dose spacing. Still, it is difficult to compare the photos directly, unless they are tested face to face in the same test. And many health professionals suggest that you get the vaccine that is available first, as Covid poses health risks.
All major vaccines offer strong protection against serious illness and death, but as rates of overall effectiveness show, some seem to do better than others in protecting against any form of the disease. Even mild or moderate cases of Covid can lead to long struggles with symptoms.
Widespread skepticism about vaccines in Germany has exacerbated people’s reluctance to take the AstraZeneca injection. Doctors and other frontline workers also expressed resentment that they had received unused injections from AstraZeneca instead of Pfizer-BioNTech, saying it showed a lack of respect after their efforts to help the country fight the pandemic last year. .
The rejection of the AstraZeneca vaccine caused delays in a mass vaccination campaign that already faced bureaucratic and logistical obstacles. This raised concerns that with the increase in new cases of coronavirus infection, even though Germany remained largely closed, failure to immunize enough people quickly could frustrate efforts to return the country to normal life.
“Rapid vaccination is the order of the day,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told citizens in Bavaria during a video conference on Thursday, emphasizing that all three vaccines in use in Germany have been approved by the European Agency for Medicines and are reliable.
“Personally, I have little sympathy for the reluctance to use one vaccine or another,” he said. “This is a first world problem, certainly for those who are still waiting for their first vaccination and even more so for people in countries that may not even have the prospect of receiving a first vaccine this year.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France, who had previously dismissed the AstraZeneca vaccine as questionably effective for older age groups, told reporters on Thursday that he himself would take it, responding to reports of skepticism in various parts of Europe.
The problem is deeper than just AstraZeneca. According to a survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a third of Germans say they would not be vaccinated, regardless of who made the injection. In addition to AstraZeneca, Germany also administers the vaccine of Moderna, an American company, without problems or resistance. The vaccine has an overall effectiveness of 94.5%.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been generating negative headlines in Germany since January, when the company said it would significantly cut planned deliveries to the European Union. Days before the first doses were administered, the vaccines commission in Germany recommended that the AstraZeneca injection be given only to adults under 65, citing the lack of sufficient data on its effectiveness in older people, advice followed by the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Then, several hospitals were forced to temporarily stop administering AstraZeneca vaccines after several people said they were sick the day after the inoculations, after experiencing what are considered normal reactions to the vaccine. Although hospitals have resumed vaccinations at a slower pace, the headlines have created more uncertainty.
The World Health Organization has recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine for countries where the variants are circulating, and Germany’s leading virologists, the Minister of Health and Merkel, have all defended it as safe. Recent data on the use of the vaccine in Scotland has shown that even after a dose, the AstraZeneca vaccine can reduce the risk of hospital admissions by about 94 percent.
But the numbers that stuck in many people’s minds are those from previous tests that show that AstraZeneca offers 70 percent effectiveness in protecting against Covid-19, and that the one developed by BioNTech and Pfizer has shown greater effectiveness.
Dr. Lisa Koch, a dentist in Berlin, said she was surprised at the number of young workers in her office who said they would not be vaccinated, although their jobs meant spending several hours a day around patients without a mask. Only the three dentists and another employee agreed to be immunized, she said.
“They think the vaccine is not safe, that it will not work, or even harm them,” she said, adding that most of those who rejected the vaccines were in their 20s or 30s. “They are all a little younger, maybe they have a feeling they don’t need it.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who is also a doctor, said that several months ago, before the vaccines had passed their final clinical tests, the hope was that they could achieve at least 50 to 70 percent effectiveness.
“I would not hesitate to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca any more than I would with other vaccines from BioNTech-Pfizer or Moderna,” said Ms Von der Leyen to the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.
German medical associations have issued an appeal urging all medical personnel to take the opportunity to have an injection, emphasizing that all vaccines approved by the authorities are safe and provide more protection than not being vaccinated.
A study of Britain’s mass inoculation program, released this week, pointed to the vaccine’s effectiveness, even among older people. The study also showed that from 28 to 34 days after the first injection, when it appeared to be at or near peak efficacy, the AstraZeneca vaccine reduced the risk of hospital admissions for Covid-19 by about 94 percent.
But all of this has not convinced many in Germany.
Berlin police have been unsuccessfully asking state health officials to make vaccines available to them, said Benjamin Jendro, a spokesman for the police union in Berlin.
But this week, with thousands of unused doses of AstraZeneca available, the union was told that 24,000 would be forcibly destined. “Now, suddenly, because nobody else wants AstraZeneca, they say we can have it,” he said. “It is all still very new, but when others reject something and then it is offered to the police, it is understandable that many colleagues feel burned. And they are concerned, there are so many conflicting reports. “
“Some of the colleagues say they will do it immediately, others are more uncertain,” he said.