Thread by @bopanc

Many people can’t wait to get a Covid-19 vaccine. But people in Europe are balking at taking one developed by ⁦@AstraZeneca⁩ - after the EU pressured the company to supply more vaccines. With ⁦@margheritamvs⁩ ⁦@NBisserbe⁩ ⁦@WSJ⁩ wsj.com/articles/these…

Health-worker unions say thou­sands of their mem­bers refuse to take one of the three Covid-19 vac­cines avail­able in the re­gion be­cause of con­cerns over ef­fi­cacy and re­ports of side ef­fects, the lat­est set­back for the EU’s slow roll­out wsj.com/articles/these…

Af­ter de­mand­ing that @AstraZeneca de­liver more doses to the bloc, some EU lead­ers crit­i­cized the vac­cine. French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron said last month that the shot was “quasi-in­ef­fec­tive” for peo­ple over 65 wsj.com/articles/these…

How­ever, tri­als of all au­tho­rized vac­cines, in­clud­ing As­tra­Zeneca’s, found that they of­fered 100% pro­tec­tion from se­vere ill­ness, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and death. wsj.com/articles/these…

Domenico Pi­anese, sec­re­tary-gen­ of the Ital­ian po­lice union Coisp, wrote in an open let­ter last week: “The de­ci­sion to in­oc­u­late po­lice forces with the As­tra­Zeneca vac­cine, which has the low­est level of ef­fi­cacy, is in­con­ceiv­able.” wsj.com/articles/these…

In the Ger­man state of Saar­land, health au­thor­i­ties said more than half of 200 health pro­fes­sion­als who were due to re­ceive the As­tra­Zeneca shot last week­end had failed to show up with­out warn­ing. wsj.com/articles/these…

“Com­mon sense dic­tates that one needs to get vac­ci­nated in this pan­demic and those who de­lay that are risk­ing se­vere ill­ness, and they also risk pass­ing the virus onto oth­ers,” Ger­man Health Min­is­ter @jensspahn said wsj.com/articles/these…

One fea­ture of the As­tra­Zeneca vac­cine that is spark­ing re­luc­tance is the strong re­ac­tion—in­clud­ing headaches, fever, mus­cle pain and fa­tigue—re­ported by some re­cip­i­ents. Experts say this is normal and linked to the immune reaction wsj.com/articles/these…

AstraZeneca's contract to supply the UK with 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses commits it to making "best reasonable efforts," the same language used in its deal with the European Union, which critics blamed for the bloc's faltering inoculation program cnn.com/2021/02/17/eur…