Hamburg, Germany – The USA has a long way to go coronavirus the distribution of the vaccine, but it is well ahead of most other countries. This includes Germany, where many have chosen to wait one vaccine over another, instead of just getting the most available photo.
The US has 60 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine ready for release as soon as the FDA authorizes it. According to CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay, the vaccine is already available in Germany, where COVID-19 cases have increased recently. The hard part was getting the Germans to take it.
At Germany’s largest vaccination center in Hamburg, 35-year-old surgeon Johannes told us he was eager to get the first shot, so he might not have to worry so much about the risks of transporting the disease from the hospital home to the partner and their newborn son.
But now that the offer for the AstraZeneca vaccine has actually arrived, Johannes admits that “he’s a little scared.”
“I thought I was getting it [Pfizer]-BiodNTech vaccine“But now I hear there’s a decision not to receive it,” he said. I was very disappointed. “
It is a scene that takes place in the most powerful country in Europe. Germany has already taken more than 1.4 million doses of AstraZeneca and has been distributed to vaccination centers across the country, such as Hamburg.
But polls suggest that about half of Germans don’t really want to.
More generally, the European Union, which organized the collective procurement of all vaccine doses for the 27 Member States, provided 400 million doses of 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 – less than the 95% efficacy that Pfizer / BioNTech reported in their studies.
The German National Vaccine Committee then refused to approve AstraZeneca for people over the age of 65, citing a lack of data from studies that showed it worked well in the elderly.
The reaction has been rapid, significant and has even spread outside Germany to other major European countries, including France, where the vaccine has only recently been phased out for use by the elderly. Germany has not yet approved its use in all adults, but the government is currently examining the restriction for people over the age of 65, and senior doctors in the country have requested its authorization for all those over the age of 18.
However, many Germans simply do not trust the AstraZeneca vaccine, despite new real-world data from the UK suggesting that the shooting is in fact more effective than the Pfizer vaccine in the prevention of hospitalization – an amazing discovery, according to immunologist Thomas Jacobs.
“We don’t have the best and the second best; we have two very effective and safe vaccines,” he told CBS News, referring to drugs approved for use in Germany. He said there could be a “bit” of simple snobbery when it comes to Germans poking their noses into the British-developed vaccine in favor of Pfizer, which was, after all, made in part by German firm BioNTech.
The director of the Hamburg vaccination center said it was a separate issue from the first world.
“You know, there 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.”
With many Germans refusing AstraZeneca’s “other car”, most of its doses are already in cold stores in Germany.
Compared to almost 15.3% of Americans who received the first vaccine, less than 6% of Germans had theirs.
But, as Johannes told CBS News, “we all want to get back to normal,” and changing perceptions of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Germany could help increase the already large number of photos taken there and across Europe.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has now come out to defend the AstraZeneca vaccine. She was due to meet with state leaders across Germany on Wednesday to discuss the next phase of the pandemic response in the country, where life is still largely blocked.