ASTRAZENECA SHOTS RESUME IN EUROPE
Leaders urge public to get vaccinated as restrictions loom
Governments across Europe raced Friday to lift suspensions on AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine and reassure an exhausted and anxious public that it was safe amid a new wave of infections that led many countries to reimpose harsh restrictions on movement and businesses.
German officials warned that plans to ease restrictions by Easter would have to be put on hold and said that more measures might be needed in the weeks ahead. Paris was one of many cities across France where people were essentially ordered to stay at home. Italy entered its third national lockdown Monday, and Poland will put in place its own lockdown today.
The rapid moves to tighten what were already relatively stringent restrictions came as nearly every country in Europe that had halted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine — including France, Germany, Italy and Spain — said they would start using it again.
But the brief halt in the use of the vaccine underscored the slow pace of mass inoculation campaigns, which led officials to warn that the only way to control the virus was to impose restrictions. Across all of Europe, the official death toll surged past 900,000 last week, according to the World Health Organization. The latest outbreaks are a stark reminder that not enough people have been inoculated to seriously blunt the impact of a new wave of infection spreading across the continent, so governments are once again being forced to tighten already difficult restrictions on businesses and social interactions.
Political leaders rushed to try to undo any damage to the public’s trust and faith in AstraZeneca and vaccines more broadly — with a number of them rolling up their sleeves and getting the shots themselves to drive the point home.
In France, where vaccine skepticism runs deep, Jean Castex, the country’s 55-yearold prime minister, flashed a thumbs up at television cameras after getting his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine at a military hospital. Lithuania also resumed using AstraZeneca vaccines Friday, and the nation’s president, prime minister and health minister were set to get shots Monday.
While faith in AstraZeneca remains high in Britain, where the vaccine was developed in partnership with researchers at Oxford University, Prime Minister Boris Johnson got a shot Friday as he sought to ease the minds of millions in the country who had already received it.