Germany close to U-turn on ‘bad’ jabs
Germany was under pressure to change its Covid vaccination strategy yesterday after the country’s top vaccine regulator acknowledged that advice against giving the AstraZeneca jab to over-65s had been flawed.
The announcement came as a team of German scientists called on the government to follow the UK in delaying second doses after a study showed it could save up to 15,000 lives.
Thomas Mertens, the head of Germany’s Standing Committee on Vaccination (Stiko), said on Sunday that the country was likely to change its controversial guidelines not to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to over-65s, admitting errors had been made. Promising ‘‘a new, updated recommendation very soon’’, Mertens said that ‘‘somehow the whole thing went very badly’’.
‘‘We had the data that we had and based on this data we made the recommendation. But we never criticised the vaccine. We only criticised the fact that the data situation for the age group over-65 was not good or not sufficient,’’ he said on the ZDF news network. Mertens said the commission believed the AstraZeneca vaccine was ‘‘very good’’ and that their opinion of the vaccine was ‘‘now even better with the addition of the new data’’.
Sitko’s refusal to approve
AstraZeneca for over-65s, despite its approval by the European Medicines Agency for over-18s, led to a backlash against the jab in Germany. Around three quarters its 1.4 million delivered doses are still sitting in cold storage as a result. It emerged this week that four out of five AstraZeneca vaccine doses delivered to EU countries are yet to be used.
Markus Soder, the prime minister of Bavaria, yesterday joined his counterparts in BadenWuerttemberg, Hamburg and Saxony to demand the doses should be made available immediately.
‘‘Rather than have it lying around, it should be used to vaccinate whoever wants it. No dose should be left over or thrown away. Everyone who is vaccinated protects himself and others,’’ he told Bild newspaper.
In total, 11 of the 27 EU member states initially declined to recommend the AstraZeneca vaccine for the elderly, including Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and Austria. Austria last week said it would reverse its decision, while France has indicated it will reopen the approval process to consider recommending the jab for seniors.
French President Emmanuel Macron last week said he would gladly take the AstraZeneca vaccine, just a few weeks after claiming the vaccine was ‘‘quasiineffective’’ for over-65s.
Meanwhile, a team of researchers said delaying the second dose of the BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines beyond the current 28 days would speed up the vaccination process, provide greater protection for the population and result in ‘‘up to 10,000 or 15,000 fewer deaths’’ in Germany. A study by a team from Berlin’s Humboldt University and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research concluded delaying the second dose would also prevent vaccine mutations from continuing to gain traction. Dirk Brockmann, a Berlin-based pandemic researcher, told Germany’s Deutsche Welle news service yesterday that a change in strategy would boost the country’s lagging vaccination rollout.
‘‘According to that data, there is complete protection against death from Covid in the risk groups after the first dose. That’s a huge success,’’ said Prof Brockmann. ‘‘We are now seeing the third wave, so this change could protect a lot more people in the high-risk groups from death and serious illness.’’
Germany’s vaccination advisory committee is reportedly considering extending the time between the first and second doses to 60 or even 90 days.