[ad_1]
WARSAW / SOFIA – Europe launched a large vaccination campaign against COVID-19 on Sunday to try to curb the coronavirus pandemic, but many Europeans are skeptical about the speed at which vaccines have been tested and approved and are reluctant to get vaccinated.
The European Union has secured contracts with a variety of drug manufacturers, including Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses and has set a goal of all adults being vaccinated next year .
But polls have pointed to high levels of hesitancy toward inoculation in countries from France to Poland, and many are used to vaccines taking 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 she left a church in central Warsaw with her two children.
“I’m not saying vaccination shouldn’t be done. But I’m not going to test an unverified vaccine on my children or myself.”
Polls in Poland, where mistrust of public institutions runs deep, have shown that less than 40% of people plan to get vaccinated, so far. By Sunday, only half the medical staff at a Warsaw hospital where the country’s first injection was given had signed up.
In Spain, one of the most affected European countries, German, a 28-year-old singer and music composer from Tenerife, also plans to wait for now.
“No one close to me has had it (COVID-19). Obviously I am not saying it does not exist because many people have died from it, but for now they would not have it (the vaccine).”
An Orthodox Christian bishop in Bulgaria, where 45% of people have said they would not receive a vaccine and 40% plan to wait to see if any negative side effects appear, compared COVID-19 to polio.
“I myself am vaccinated against everything I can be,” Bishop Tihon told reporters after receiving his vaccine, together with the Minister of Health in Sofia.
He spoke about polio anxiety before the vaccine was available in the 1950s and 1960s.
“We were all shaking with fear of contracting polio. And then we were very happy,” he said. “Now we have to convince people. It’s a shame.”
Great leap forward
The general hesitation does not seem to take into account the scientific advances of the last decades.
The traditional method of creating vaccines – introducing a weakened or killed virus, or part of one, to boost the body’s immune system – takes more than a decade on average, according to a 2013 study. A pandemic flu vaccine took longer eight years, while a hepatitis B vaccine took almost 18 years to prepare.
Moderna’s vaccine, based on so-called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology, went from genetic sequencing to the first human injection in 63 days.
“We will look back on the progress made in 2020 and say, ‘That was a time when science really took a leap forward,'” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the University of Oxford’s Clinical Research Unit, who recounts supported by Wellcome. Trust.
The Pfizer / BioNTech injection has been linked to some cases of severe allergic reactions as it has been implemented in the UK and the US. It has not shown any serious long-term side effects in clinical trials.
Independent pollster Alpha Research said its recent survey suggested that fewer than one in five Bulgarians in the first groups to be offered the vaccine (first-line doctors, pharmacists, teachers, and nursing home staff) planned to offer themselves as volunteers to receive a vaccine.
An IPSOS survey of 15 countries published on November 5 showed that 54% of French people would have a COVID vaccine if one was available. The figure was 64% in Italy and Spain, 79% in Great Britain and 87% in China.
A subsequent IFOP survey, which had no comparative data for other countries, showed that only 41% of people in France would take the photo.
In Sweden, where public trust in authorities is high, as elsewhere in the Nordic countries, more than two out of three people want to get vaccinated. Still, some say no.
“If someone gave me 10 million euros, I would not take it,” 32-year-old Lisa Renberg said Wednesday.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Sunday urged Poles to sign up for vaccination, saying the effect of herd immunity is up to them.
Critics have said that nationalist leaders in Warsaw have overly accepted anti-vaccination attitudes in the past in an effort to win conservative support. —Reuters
