The vaccin of the British-Swedish concern AstraZeneca hasn't got the best of reputations in Europe. For starters, the results of the stage 3 tests only showed a 65ish reliability, compared to the 93% and 94% of Phizer and Moderna.
Now there's another problem. Some 30 people in Europe who have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca have got blood clots and there also have been a couple of deaths. As a result, most European countries pauze with the vaccination of AstraZeneca. They want to study the cases first.
EMA (the European high council for heath issues) still claims it's safe to use the vaccin, but is nevertheless going to put all the cases of blood clots in a study and they'll form a new point of view by Thursday.
Belgium is about the only country that still goes on with vaccinations with AstraZeneca. Virologists, doctors and the minister for Heath all say it's ok to use it. They'll only change their vaccination strategy if the EMA will say it's better not to use AstraZeneca.
I can understand their point of view in a way. Our vaccination rate is not advancing very rapidly. Only 6% of the whole population has got at leIfast one shot, about 3% has got the two vaccinations. We don't get enough vaccins to go faster - and to make it worse, there have been a lot of problems with the working of the vaccination centra (people not getting invited, computer program not working, ..)
If I'm totally honest, I'd prefer not to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca. I'd rather have Phizer or Johnson&Johnson when it's on the market. But we can't choose. If we refuse when we are invited, we are placed at the end of the list (and that may be next year in autumn or so).
What about you?
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