While in Belgium, criticism is fired following the slowness of the deployment of the national vaccination campaign, and the authorities are trying to remedy it, other countries are on the contrary not showing great enthusiasm to vaccinate their populations rapidly. Overview.
Australia: ‘No unnecessary risks’
‘Australia is not in an emergency like the UK. We don’t have to skimp on measurements. We don’t have to take unnecessary risks, ‘Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday.
The Conservative leader explained in particular that the United Kingdom, much harder hit by the new coronavirus and one of the first countries to launch its vaccination campaign, had encountered ‘some problems’ during its deployment because it was doing ‘urgently’.
Scott Morrison also made an argument that the British ‘do not test batches of vaccine before they are released to the public,’ something Australia for its part intends to do, he said.
Thus, the body in charge of drug regulation on the island-continent should not issue a notice on candidate vaccines before the beginning of February, and the first vaccinations should not be carried out before March.
Even though voices are starting to rise to criticize the Australian government’s slowness, the country has weathered the pandemic rather well. Currently, only a few dozen people are hospitalized there for Covid-19, out of a total population of some 25 million. This performance was achieved thanks to the implementation of particularly strict and large-scale measures as soon as epidemic outbreaks appeared.
Brazil: an ‘antivax’ president
Despite a death toll that is now close to 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus, Brazilians do not seem in a particular hurry to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Blame it on a growing mistrust of vaccines, especially those developed by Chinese laboratories.
In the fall, Brazil was the first country to complete an advanced phase trial of the ‘CoronaVac’ vaccine developed by Chinese biotech Sinovac. But the publication of full results, initially scheduled for early December, has already been postponed three times. A delay and a lack of transparency that fuel the doubts of Brazilians, even if local researchers have claimed that the vaccine was more than 50% effective.
And this mistrust is further reinforced by the anti-Chinese and anti-vaccine positions of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has already announced that he will not be vaccinated.
‘Everyone wants the vaccine, but at the same time people are afraid of the vaccine. As Chinese products have a reputation for being of poor quality, they think the same is true of the vaccine. People confuse everything! ” Says Ana Escobar, professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (USP), whose comments are reported by The echoes.
The government authorized last weekend the importation of two million doses of AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine … But it has not yet received authorization from the local health regulator (Anvisa ).
And if several dates have been put forward for the start of the vaccination campaign, none have yet been decided by the Brazilian authorities.
Finally, logistics also seem to be a problem in this huge country with a population of around 210 million people. Latest example: the Ministry of Health has only recently launched a call for tenders to buy 300 million doses, only managing for the moment to get hold of much smaller quantities.
Japan: do not rush the population
The Japanese do not show great confidence in new vaccines either. According to a recent survey, 36% of those surveyed do not intend to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
In 2013, a controversy around supposed side effects caused by the vaccine against the papillomavirus (HPV) had erupted in the archipelago, pushing the government to no longer actively recommend it. Subsequently, the experts had shown that the side effects were not related to the vaccine. But some damage seems to have been done.
In addition, Japan has not been hit as hard as Western countries by the pandemic. In nearly a year, the country has had to deplore the death ‘only’ of approximately 3,500 people from the new coronavirus, out of a population that is particularly old and numbering more than 125 million inhabitants.
In this context, the Japanese government does not want to give the impression that it is trying to force the hand of its people. He therefore opted for a fairly slow, free and voluntary vaccination campaign. Its goals: 10,000 active healthcare workers on the front lines in February, 3 million caregivers in March, the elderly from April, and the rest of the population at the start of the summer. To this end, the Ministry of Health has ordered 290 million doses from Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, whose certification procedures are in progress or in the process of being.
Israel, the counterexample
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Israel, which plans to vaccinate its entire population in the coming months.
At the moment, Israel vaccinates about 150,000 people per day, which is 2% of its population. Israelis believe the Covid-19 will be little more than a bad memory by March 2021, because by then the country will have achieved group immunity.
Critics in Europe
In Europe, member countries have decided to collectivize doses. This arouses much criticism, especially in Germany. The press and some politicians accuse the French of having favored the vaccine from Sanofi, whose vaccine could be abandoned, to the detriment of the American-German Pfizer / BioNTech.
What is certain is that Europe has chosen diversity at a lower cost, betting on 6 vaccines, while Israel has bet on a single vaccine at a high price – that of Pfizer / BioNTech, the right horse. (for the time being).
There is a lack of doses in Europe. The mass vaccination campaign cannot begin. To this supply problem is also added a logistical and bureaucratic problem which is the responsibility of the States.
The European Medicines Agency however defends the approach of the Old Continent, which is also more cautious than that of the United Kingdom, the United States or Israel.
Source: BusinessAM
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