WARSAW / SOFIA (Reuters) – Europe rolled out a massive COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Sunday to try to contain the coronavirus pandemic, but many Europeans are skeptical about the speed at which the vaccines have been tested and approved and are reluctant to get the shot .
The European Union has contracts with a range of drug manufacturers, including Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses and has a goal of vaccinating all adults by next year.
But studies have shown that in countries from France to Poland, there is a great deal of hesitation about vaccination, with many used to vaccines that take decades to develop, not just months.
“I don’t think there is a vaccine in history that has been tested so quickly,” said Ireneusz Sikorski, 41, as he stepped out of a church in the center of Warsaw with his two children.
“I’m not saying that vaccination shouldn’t take place. But I am not going to test an unverified vaccine on my children or myself. “
Surveys in Poland, where mistrust in public institutions is high, showed that currently less than 40% of people intend to get vaccinated. On Sunday, only half of the medical staff at a hospital in Warsaw where the country’s first shot was administered had reported.
In Spain, one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, the German, a 28-year-old singer and composer originally from Tenerife, also plans to wait now.
“No one in my area has had it (COVID-19). I’m clearly not saying it doesn’t exist because a lot of people died from it, but for now, I wouldn’t have it (the vaccine). “
A Christian Orthodox bishop in Bulgaria, where 45% of people said they would not be injected and 40% plan to wait to see if any negative side effects occur, compared COVID-19 to polio.
“I myself have been vaccinated against anything I can be,” Bishop Tihon told reporters after receiving his injection, alongside the health minister in Sofia.
He spoke of polio fears before vaccination became available in the 1950s and 1960s.
We were all shaking with fear of getting polio. And then we were over the moon, ”he said. “Now we have to convince people. It is a pity.”
BIG LEAP FORWARD
The widespread hesitation does not seem to take into account the scientific developments of the past decades.
According to a 2013 study, the traditional method of making vaccines – introducing a weakened or dead virus, or a piece of it, to boost the body’s immune system – takes more than ten years on average. A pandemic flu vaccine lasted more than eight years, while a hepatitis B vaccine was almost 18 years in the making.
Moderna’s vaccine, based on the so-called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology, went from gene sequencing to the first human injection in 63 days.
“We look back at the progress made in 2020 and say, ‘That was a time when science really took a leap forward,'” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, which is supported by the Wellcome Trust.
The Pfizer / BioNTech injection has been linked to a few cases of severe allergic reactions as it has been rolled out in the UK and US. Clinical studies have not shown any serious long-term side effects.
Independent pollster Alpha Research said his recent study suggested that less than one in five Bulgarians from the first groups to be offered the vaccine – primary care physicians, pharmacists, teachers, and nursing home staff – planned to volunteer to receive an injection to get.
An IPSOS survey of 15 countries published on Nov. 5 then showed that 54% of the French would have a COVID vaccine if one was available. In Italy and Spain it was 64%, in Great Britain 79% and in China 87%.
A later IFOP poll – which had no comparative data for other countries – showed that only 41% of people in France would take the chance.
In Sweden, where public confidence in the authorities is high, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, more than two in three people want to be vaccinated. Yet some say no.
“If someone gave me $ 10 million, I wouldn’t take it,” said Lisa Renberg, 32, Wednesday.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Sunday urged Poland to sign up for vaccination, saying the herd’s immunity effect depended on them.
Critics have said Warsaw’s nationalist leaders have accepted too many anti-vaccination attitudes in the past in an attempt 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