In talking down AstraZeneca's success, the EU has sacrificed lives for the integrity of the European Project

Vaccine uptake in the EU is only poor because their leaders spread misinformation about the jabs.

Source - Daily Telegraph - 19/02/21

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As the EU and its larger member states have just amply demonstrated, there is no problem that cannot be made worse through pig-headed leadership.  Last month, when it became clear that Covid vaccines were being rolled out in Britain much faster than across the EU, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen blamed AstraZeneca for not delivering enough shots, and threatened legal action – as well as potentially blocking all vaccine exports from the EU, thereby punishing Britain as well as AstraZeneca.

How is it going now? AstraZeneca has upped production, delivered more doses and announced that it will construct a new factory in Germany to roll out the drug faster. Yet the gap between vaccination in the EU and in Britain grows ever-wider. In Britain, 23.9 per cent of the population has now received at least one dose, with the government achieving its target of offering the vaccine to all over-70s and the most-vulnerable younger groups by the middle of February. And in the EU? Just 3.2 per cent of the population has received a jab. In France and Germany it is 3.4 per cent, and in Slovakia – which is now the furthest-ahead of all EU countries – it is 4.4 per cent.

The problem now, though, is not just the much-criticised EU vaccines procurement programme – although that remains a huge issue. Vaccination-rollout has been hampered by foolish efforts by EU leaders to undermine public faith in the AstraZeneca vaccine. The German magazine Spiegel reported this week figures from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute which show that of 736,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered to Germany, just 64,869 have actually been used.  Why so few? People have not been turning up at their vaccination appointments. In France, too, people refusing the vaccine; a website for healthcare workers to book a vaccination this week was reported to have hundreds of slots going begging, while staff at one hospital in Perigueux had written an open letter asking to be given the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines rather than the AstraZeneca one. 

This is hardly surprising given their leaders’ efforts to trash the AstraZeneca product.  The German government’s vaccine committee pointedly declined to allow the AstraZeneca vaccine to be administered to the over-65s on the grounds that there was not enough data on the efficacy of this group (although the European Medicines Agency has granted it a licence to be used in all ages). In France, President Macron, citing no evidence at all, declared the AstraZeneca vaccine to be ‘quasi ineffective’ in the over-65s. 

False claims now abound in France and Germany that the AstraZeneca vaccine has awful side-effects beyond those reported in the trials – something which has been debunked by Germany’s Paul Ehrlich Institute, which has been analysing the rollout of all vaccines.  It is true that trial data – as well as real-world evidence – suggests that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are more efficacious than the AstraZeneca one. But the same data show that all three vaccines are very effective, and well above the 50 per cent threshold that regulators considered would make them worthy of approval. Moreover, when you have a raging epidemic, the priority is surely to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible, not to fuss that one might be a few per cent more efficacious than another. 

It wasn’t so long ago that Trump’s White House was seen by many as leading to way in pumping out misinformation on the Covid pandemic, threatening public health in the process. That torch has well and truly been handed to the Elysee Palace.