Hamburg, Germany – The US still has a long way to go to do this coronavirus distribution of vaccines, but this is most other countries. This includes Germany, where many have chosen to wait one vaccine above the other, instead of just getting the chance that is best available.
The US has 60 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine ready to launch as soon as the FDA authorizes it. As reported by CBS News, Chris Livesay, the vaccine is already available in Germany, where COVID-19 cases have increased recently. The difficult part led to Germans having to take it on.
The 35-year-old surgeon Johannes said at Germany’s largest vaccination center in Hamburg that he was eager to get his first shot so he could no longer worry about the risks of possibly carrying the disease from the hospital to his partner. not. and their newborn son.
But now that the offer has actually come for the uptake of the vaccine AstraZeneca, Johannes admits that he is ‘a little scared’.
‘I thought I was getting the [Pfizer]-BioNTech vaccine, but now I’ve heard there is the decision that I do not get it, “he said. I was really disappointed. “
It is a scene set in the most powerful country in Europe. Germany has already delivered more than 1.4 million doses of AstraZeneca medicine, and it has been distributed to vaccination centers across the country, such as those in Hamburg.
Opinion polls suggest that about half of Germans do not want it.
More generally, the European Union, which has arranged the purchase of all vaccine doses for its 27 member states, has secured a whopping 400 million doses of the vaccine developed in the UK.
Clinical trials have suggested that the AstraZeneca formula was between 60% and 90% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infection – lower than the 95% efficacy reported by Pfizer / BioNTech in their trials.
Then the German National Vaccination Committee refused to approve the AstraZeneca for people over 65, citing a lack of data from the trials proving that it works well for the elderly.
The setback was rapid, significant, and it spread even beyond Germany to other major European countries, including France, where the vaccine had only recently been cleared for use in the elderly.
Germany appears to be on Thursday to finally turn off course, as the National Vaccination Committee formally recommends that the government authorize the AstraZeneca shot for use by all adults, including those under 65, and bow under pressure from senior doctors in the country.
But the damage has already been done, and it may take time to repair. Many Germans simply do not trust the AstraZeneca vaccine – despite new, real data from the UK suggesting that the shot is actually more effective than the Pfizer vaccine to prevent hospitalization – a wonderful breakthrough, according to immunologist Thomas Jacobs.
“We do not have the best and the second best; we have two very effective and safe vaccines,” he told CBS News, referring to the drugs approved for use in Germany. He said there could be a ‘bit’ of simple snobbery if Germans turned up their noses at the vaccination developed in Britain, in favor of the Pfizer one, which was, after all, made in part by the German firm BioNTech .
The director of the Hamburg Vaccination Center said it was a clear first-world problem.
“You know, these are people – you want the best,” Dirk Heinrich told Livesay. “You want to drive a Porsche if you have the chance, instead of another car.”
Since many Germans refuse the AstraZeneca ‘other car’, most of its doses are already in cold storage in Germany.
Compared to nearly 15.3% of Americans who had their first vaccine shot, less than 6% of Germans had it.
But as John told CBS News, “we all want to return to normal life”, and the changing perception of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Germany could help build on the already rising number of shots being fired there and across Europe.
Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this week. She met with state leaders from across Germany on Wednesday to discuss the next phase of the pandemic response in the country, where life is still largely locked up.