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By Crispian Balmer
ROME, April 14 (Reuters) - The head of healthcare management
in Italy's largest region, Lombardy, said on Wednesday there was
a growing reluctance amongst residents to accept AstraZeneca's
COVID-19 vaccine because of safety fears.
Public confidence in the vaccine has been battered worldwide
since reports emerged linking it to very rare but potentially
fatal blood clots in the brain.
"It is a phenomenon that in recent days is becoming more
serious than we might have thought," Giovanni Pavesi told the
regional health commission in Lombardy, which is centred on
Italy's financial capital Milan.
Officials elsewhere across the country reported similar
problems, posing a major headache to the government as it
struggles to ramp up vaccination efforts.
"The rejection of AstraZeneca has been seen in numerous
regions," said Antonino Spirlì, acting president of Calabria,
the toe of Italy's boot, where the region's main hospital
reported up to 70% of people were turning down AstraZeneca.
"It seems that many people need more time to decide what to
do," Spirli told a group of foreign reporters.
Italy, like many European countries, briefly halted
AstraZeneca inoculations last month over the concerns, but
resumed them for those aged 60 and over after EU regulators said
the benefits of using the vaccine outweighed the risks.
This recommendation went against initial advice that said
the shot was only effective for those aged under 55. "Too often
governments have struggled to confirm what was said a couple of
days beforehand," said Calabria's Spirli.
Underscoring the confusion within Europe, Denmark announced
on Wednesday that it would no longer use AstraZeneca, while the
French government spokesman voiced his confidence in the
product.
AstraZeneca was not immediately available for comment on
Wednesday. It has said in the past it is working to understand
individual cases of side-effects and "possible mechanisms that
could explain these extremely rare events".
Italy has looked to restore trust, with Prime Minister Mario
Draghi himself getting vaccinated with AstraZeneca last month.
But in many people's minds, the damage had already been done.
Nello Musumeci, the president of the region of Sicily, has
said up to 80% of people on the Mediterranean island were
refusing AstraZeneca. In Italy's heel, Puglia, the rejection
rate was put at 40%.
"It is natural that the alarm is so high, but we have a duty
to believe scientists who say it is more dangerous not to
vaccinate than vaccinate," Musumeci said at the weekend.
More than 115,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Italy, the
second highest tally in Europe after Britain, with the country
still registering hundreds of deaths each day.
It is pinning its hopes on mass vaccinations to put an end
to the 14-month-old crisis, but slower-than-expected arrivals of
doses coupled with growing public scepticism and a bungling
bureaucracy have significantly complicated matters.
Fears that another vaccine might also trigger rare
bloodclots sowed further confusion this week.
Italy delayed on Wednesday deliveries of some 184,000 shots
of the vaccine made by U.S. drugmaker Johnson & Johnson after
U.S. authorities put it on pause to review the situation.
J&J has said it is working closely with regulators and noted
no clear causal relationship had been established between the
events and its shot.
The first shipment of the J&J shots only arrived on Tuesday
and had been expected to be rushed into vaccine centres.
"Here we are in the hands of God: if it goes right it goes
right, if it goes wrong it goes wrong. I don't know, I don't
know what to say," said Rome resident Annamaria Gingaroli.
(Additional reporting by Cristiano Corvino and Angelo Amante;
Editing by Nick Macfie)
