Europe’s vaccine hesitancy

Major European countries are facing a third wave of coronavirus deaths and infections as the EU and individual member states come under fire for slow vaccination rollouts, trailing countries like Britain and the United States.

“We didn’t shoot for the stars,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on March 24. “That should be a lesson for all of us. We were wrong to lack ambition, to lack the madness, I would say, to say: ‘It’s possible, let’s do it’.”

EU behind on vaccine deals

The European Commission secured its first vaccine contract 105 days after former EU member Britain. It approved its first vaccine 19 days after Britain.

The slow rollout has been compounded by delays, fears about safety, tension over deliveries, including recent disputes with Britain over exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Many Europeans are sceptical about vaccines anyway.

EU officials told Reuters product liability was among contentious points in European efforts to secure supply deals for potential vaccines from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi, whose COVID-19 vaccine development has been delayed.

Pricing was another possible sticking point but Sandra Gallina, director-general for health at the European Commission, denied that the Commission had prioritised price over making sure it secured vaccines.

With eight additional vaccine deals, the EU has made up for lost ground and secured 1.84 billion doses that have the potential to cover 227% of the bloc’s population, according to the Duke Global Health Innovation Center’s Launch and Scale Speedometer.

The United States has the potential coverage of 200% of its population, but the UK has one of the highest coverage rates with vaccine deals able to cover 364% of the population.

EU slow to approve

The European Commission said in early March that it was considering emergency approvals for vaccines as a faster alternative to more rigorous conditional marketing authorisations which have been used so far.

Any change of tack would come after Eastern European countries, including Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, approved Russian and Chinese vaccines with national emergency procedures.

Britain also used its emergency procedure to approve COVID-19 vaccines.

European countries struggle to administer

The EU hammered out prices and orders of doses, but it is the responsibility of individual member countries to work with the pharmaceutical companies to deliver vaccines and carry out their own inoculation strategies.

Overall the vaccine development programme have been slow across the EU — 63 days to give 5% of the population its first dose after the vaccinations began at the end of December. The UK and the U.S. reached a 5% vaccination rate 38 and 40 days after the first shot, respectively.

With infection rates rising, governments are under pressure to speed up inoculations. Still, some are succeeding at getting shots into their residents’ arms faster than others.

Malta, with the highest vaccination rate in Europe at 29% on March 28, is expected to achieve herd immunity for the island nation’s half a million population by mid-summer, according to Health Minister Chris Fearne.

Vaccination rates have also soared in Hungary after its drug regulator approved Russia’s Sputnik V for use. Since the EU does not have a procurement deal with the Russian vaccine, member states like Hungary and Slovakia can pursue their own contracts.

“We have absolutely no need of Sputnik V,” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who heads the EU executive’s vaccine task force, told TF1 television on March 21.

But in the last week Austria signalled it, too, was in talks to purchase a million doses of the Russian-made vaccine, while Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed possible cooperation on vaccines with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a joint video conference on Tuesday.

EU-negotiated vaccines should be distributed based on countries’ populations, but deliveries do not seem to be proceeding evenly.

Germany, Europe’s largest country by population, has received enough doses of vaccines to give one shot to 21% of its population. By contrast, Bulgaria, with less than a tenth of Germany’s population, has only gotten enough vaccines to give one shot to 10% of its population.

Vaccine hesitancy lingers

Many Europeans are sceptical about the speed at which the vaccines were tested and approved, and recent concerns over the AstraZeneca vaccine have added to the doubts.

At least 13 European countries hit pause on AstraZeneca shots, which accounted for 23% of doses delivered to EU countries at the end of March, after a small number of people who got the shots reported side-effects involving blood clots.

The polling firm YouGov said it had already found in late February that Europeans were more hesitant about the AstraZeneca vaccine than they were about those from Pfizer and Moderna, and that the clot concerns had further damaged public perceptions.

AstraZeneca says its vaccine is safe and effective, citing extensive trial data. Millions of doses have been safely administered in Europe and the EU regulator and World Health Organization both said the benefits outweighed the risks.

A week after many European countries resumed the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, EU leaders voiced frustration over a massive shortfall in contracted deliveries of doses and vaccinations continued to lag. And on Wednesday, Germany announced it would restrict use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to people aged 60 and above as well as high-priority groups.