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(Corrects spelling of Riga resident Kovalevs' name in 4th
paragraph)
By Janis Laizans and Andrius Sytas
RIGA, April 16 (Reuters) - People in their 30s showed up in
their hundreds on Friday morning as Latvia offered the
AstraZeneca vaccine to anyone who wanted it in order to
clear a growing backlog of the shot often refused by the old.
Latvia is now vaccinating people over 65 and those with
chronic illnesses, but many do not show up when told they will
be given AstraZeneca.
Denmark this week became the first country to stop using
AstraZeneca altogether, as European officials investigate
reports of rare blood clots. Many countries have resumed using
the shot, with some restricting it to certain age groups, mostly
those aged above 50 or above 60.
“We queued two and half hours before opening, around 6:30 in
the morning, because this is the only way out of this for us,”
Riga resident Vladlens Kovalevs told Reuters at a converted
convention centre in the city.
Partly due to hesitancy over AstraZeneca, Latvia has been
lagging in vaccination, with only 7.8% of adults getting at
least a single dose by Sunday, the worst result in the European
Union, according to European Centre for Disease Control and
Prevention.
A total of about 8,000 doses were distributed to seven
vaccination centres around the country, to be used over the
weekend, in one of the first open-to-all COVID-19 vaccination
schemes in the EU.
"We had an AstraZeneca surplus and to avoid keeping vaccines
in the warehouse we decided to make this walk-in line open to
anyone", said the chief of Latvia's vaccination programme, Eva
Juhnevica.
Latvia and neighbouring Lithuania asked Denmark to sell them
its leftover vaccines to speed up their own efforts.
In the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, a similar backlog of
vaccines was cleared after being offered to the young, who were
not expecting to get a shot so early.
"People over 65 in Vilnius are extremely reluctant to take
AstraZeneca vaccine - so we began giving them Pfizer vaccine,
and opened up AstraZeneca vaccination to priority groups
containing younger people", Vilnius mayor Remigijus Simasius
told Reuters. "And the vaccination is now going smoothly."
(Reporting by Janis Laizans in Riga and Andrius Sytas in
Vilnius
Writing by Andrius Sytas
Editing by Giles Elgood)
