Vaccine Politics: How Europe Injected More Doubt Into a Vaccine the World Needs
Charles Michel sat in his office in Brussels on Monday afternoon busy preparing to host a summit of European leaders eager to know plans for accelerating the continent’s listless vaccination program. Then the media reports started coming in: Germany was suspending use of the AstraZeneca Plc shot over concerns it was linked to blood clots. New Scientist Magazine.
With no warning or consultation, the president of the European Council—like other top European Union officials—was blindsided. The decision quickly set off a chain reaction that not only laid bare the mess of the vaccine program, but undermined the very institutions that preside over it. Other countries felt compelled to follow Germany’s lead and stop administering the vaccine, going against the advice of the European Medicines Agency.
The week of drama ended with most countries reinstating Astra doses after the EMA, the EU’s regulator, reiterated on Thursday any risks were far outweighed by the benefits. Germany’s decision to hit the brakes came at a terrible time, setting back the vaccine rollout just as Europe confronts a new wave of infections that have led countries to reimpose or extend restrictions.
The chaotic campaign also threatens to deal a huge blow to the EU’s credibility both globally and with its own citizens, and delay the reopening of Europe’s shattered economies. The 27 states of the EU have only given first doses to 8.3% of their combined population compared with 39% in the U.K. and 23% in the U.S., according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. The question is how the bloc emerges from what’s arguably its biggest test of unity yet.
The danger too is that fresh seeds of doubt have inflicted lasting damage on a vaccine that’s being used around the world and is the workhorse of the global effort to end the pandemic. Just days after receiving millions of doses of the Astra shot via Covax, the World Health Organization-backed facility to provide doses to lower-income nations, countries ranging from Indonesia to the Democratic Republic of Congo followed Europe’s lead and halted its use.
“I worry about the wider impact of these decisions to suspend the rollout,” said Anna Marriott, head of health policy at U.K.-based charity Oxfam. “This could reverse a lot of investment that’s gone into combating vaccine hesitancy. European leaders have a huge responsibility to publicly communicate in every corner of the world what the data says to redress some of the harm done in the last few days.”
Suspending the Astra shot was just the latest chapter in the continent’s love-hate relationship with the vaccine, developed by scientists at the University of Oxford. Over the past two months, European leaders had taken turns denigrating the shot as ineffective and then lambasting the British-Swedish company for failing to deliver doses as promised, even threatening to sue over the lack of supplies.
This account of the decisions taken on Astra’s vaccine is based on public moments and conversations with six people with knowledge of private discussions.
The latest turmoil kicked off on March 7 when Austria stopped using a batch of the vaccine after the death of one person and an illness in another connected to blood clots after inoculation.
Four days later, Denmark became the first country to suspend Astra altogether after a 60-year-old woman formed a blood clot and died, despite authorities admitting it wasn’t possible to determine if there was a link to the vaccine. Austria, Norway and Iceland quickly followed suit while Italy announced it would just ban one batch.
The political price of the bungled response to getting out of the Covid pandemic and the sluggish pace of vaccinations came on Sunday, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in state elections. When party leaders convened by video on Monday morning to discuss what went wrong, Health Minister Jens Spahn, widely blamed for the government’s poor handling of the crisis, attempted to defend his record.
The EU’s vaccine campaign has been bedeviled by problems from the start, beginning with its decision to pool procurement across 27 member-states, a noble strategy aimed at fair access but one that slowed down the EU’s ability to clinch vaccine contracts. Authorization of vaccines by the EMA also lagged, delaying the start of the program.
Europe now faces an uphill battle to convince more people to get the shot. French Prime Minister Jean Castex took the first step toward trying to restore confidence by getting an Astra dose on Friday. France, though, restricted the use of the vaccine to people over 55 until further data is reviewed.
Spahn, the German health minister, had initially planned to give an immediate statement as well. But he first waited for the EMA’s written report and then called European and German state counterparts to make sure that everybody was on board with the decision to resume Astra vaccinations.