WARSAW / SOFIA (Reuters) – Europe launches huge COVID-19 vaccination attempt on Sunday to try to control the coronavirus pandemic, but many Europeans are skeptical about the speed with which vaccines have been tested and approved and reluctant to be shot .
The European Union has secured contracts with a number of drug manufacturers, including Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses and has set a target for all adults to be inoculated next year.
But polls have shown high levels of hesitation about inoculation in countries from France to Poland, many accustomed to vaccines that take decades to develop, not just months.
“I don’t think there is a vaccine in history that can be tested so quickly,” said 41-year-old Ireneusz Sikorski as she walked out of a church in central Warsaw with her two children.
“I do not say that vaccination should not take place. But I will not test an unconfirmed vaccine on my children or me. “
Polls in Poland, where distrust in public institutions is deepening, have so far shown less than 40% of people intend to get vaccinated. On Sunday, only half of the medical staff in a Warsaw hospital where the country’s first shooting was administered were enrolled.
In Spain, one of the most affected countries in Europe, the German, a 28-year-old singer and music composer from Tenerife, intends to wait now.
“No one was close to him (COVID-19). Obviously, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, because a lot of people have died because of it, but I wouldn’t have it (the vaccine) yet. “
An Orthodox Christian bishop in Bulgaria, where 45% of people said they would not receive a stroke and 40% plan to wait to see if there are any negative side effects compared to COVID-19 with polio.
“I myself am vaccinated against everything I can be,” Bishop Tikhon told reporters after he was shot, along with Sofia’s health minister.
He talked about polio anxiety before vaccination became available in the 1950s and 1960s.
“We were all shaking for fear of catching polio. And then we were happy, “he said. “It simply came to our notice then. It’s a shame.”
A BIG STEP AHEAD
Large-scale hesitation does not seem to take into account the scientific developments of recent decades.
The traditional method of creating vaccines – the introduction of a weakened or dead virus, or a piece of it, to stimulate the body’s immune system – takes an average of more than a decade, according to a 2013 study. over eight years, while a hepatitis B vaccine was almost 18 years old.
The Moderna vaccine, based on so-called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology, went from gene sequencing to the first human injection in 63 days.
“We will look back at the progress made in 2020 and say, ‘This was a time when science really took a leap forward,'” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit. Wellcome Trust.
The Pfizer / BioNTech image has been linked to several cases of severe allergic reactions since its launch in the United Kingdom and the United States. It did not show serious long-term side effects in clinical trials.
Independent survey Alpha Research said its recent survey suggests that less than one in five Bulgarians in the first groups to be vaccinated – front-line doctors, pharmacists, teachers and nursing home staff – have planned to volunteer. to make a shot.
An IPSOS survey in 15 countries published on November 5 showed that 54% of French people would have a COVID vaccine if one were available. The figure was 64% in Italy and Spain, 79% in the United Kingdom and 87% in China.
A subsequent FIFG survey – which did not have comparative data for other countries – showed that only 41% of people in France were shot.
In Sweden, where public confidence in the authorities is as high as elsewhere in the Nordics, more than two in three people want to be immunized. However, some say no.
“If someone gave me 10 million euros, I would not take them,” Lisa Renberg, 32, said on Wednesday.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Sunday asked Poles to register for vaccinations, saying the effect of the herd’s immunity depends on them.
Critics have said that nationalist leaders in Warsaw have accepted anti-vaccination attitudes too much in the past in an effort to gain conservative support.
Additional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw, Colm Fulton in Stockholm, Phil Blenkinsop in Brussels and Silvio Castellanos in Madrid; Written by Justyna Pawlak; Editing by Nick Macfie