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* Health officials decry vaccine gap between rich and poor
* Australia orders alternative to AstraZeneca for under-50s
* Hong Kong delays delivery of AstraZeneca shots
By Stephanie Nebehay and Douglas Busvine
April 9 (Reuters) - Doses of vaccines rejected as countries
fine-tune their inoculation campaigns will go to poor countries
where possible to counter a "shocking imbalance" in
distribution, international health officials said on Friday.
Authorities in Australia and Greece became the latest to
recommend alternatives to the AstraZeneca vaccine for
younger people over fears of possible very rare blood clots,
while Hong Kong delayed deliveries.
The city said it had enough alternatives and did not want to
waste these shots while global supplies were short.
Australia's decision effectively put paid to plans to have
its population vaccinated by the end of October, highlighting
the delicate public health balancing act the issue has created.
Giving alternative vaccines to younger recipients will delay
inoculation campaigns by around a month in Australia, France and
Britain, science information and analytics company Airfinity
forecast after crunching the numbers for those countries.
Millions of doses of the AstraZeneca shot have been safely
administered around the world but some governments have limited
its use to older age groups as a precaution while cases of
clotting are investigated.
The World Health Organization said most countries did not
have anywhere near enough shots of any vaccine to cover health
workers and others at high risk from exposure to the virus,
which has killed almost 3 million people around the world.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said high
income countries had on average vaccinated one in four people
while in low income countries it was one in more than 500.
"There remains a shocking imbalance in the distribution of
vaccines," he told a press briefing on Friday.
The WHO and GAVI vaccine alliance's COVAX mechanism aims to
ensure vaccines reach poorer states. Asked whether COVAX was
negotiating for doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that had been
shunned, GAVI alliance head Seth Berkley said the Anglo-Swedish
company's supply chain had "picked up".
"As countries decide they are going to prioritise one
vaccine or another, that may free up doses, and in so doing we
will try to make sure those doses are made available without
delay, if countries are willing to make that happen," he said.
DIFFERING AGE LIMITS
Australia said it had doubled its order of the Pfizer
shot after health authorities recommended those under 50
take it instead of AstraZeneca. Greece followed Britain in
recommending people under 30 get an alternative shot.
AstraZeneca said it was working with regulators "to
understand the individual cases, epidemiology and possible
mechanisms that could explain these extremely rare events".
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) received reports of 169
cases of the rare brain blood clot by early April, after 34
million doses had been administered, Sabine Straus, chair of the
EMA's safety committee, said this week.
Most of the cases reported had occurred in women under 60.
On Friday, the EMA said that if a causal relationship is
confirmed or considered likely, regulatory action will be needed
to minimise risk.
It also said it was looking into Johnson & Johnson's (J&J)
shot over reports of blood clots. U.S.
infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said there was nothing
on reports on the J&J vaccine that is a red flag.
The AstraZeneca shot is by far the cheapest and most
high-volume vaccine launched so far to curb the pandemic and
avert damaging lockdowns, but supplies have been beset by
delays.
However, new data in the EU, where vaccinations lag those in
the United States, showed overall deliveries of vaccines were
gathering momentum. Germany said it was accelerating
inoculations but needed a new lockdown as well.
"Every day in which we don't act, we lose lives," Lothar
Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, said.
GLOBAL SUPPLY
Hong Kong Health Secretary Sophia Chan said the city would
delay its ordered shipments of the AstraZeneca vaccine this year
"so as not to cause a waste when the vaccine is still in short
supply globally".
The government was considering buying a new type of vaccine
that may offer better protection, she added.
All the countries recommending age limits for the
AstraZeneca shot have emphasised that its benefits far outweigh
the risks of catching COVID-19 for older people.
But some people have been put off. Madrid said less than
half of over 60s due to have the AstraZeneca shot on Thursday
turned up, a day after Spain recommended younger people get a
different shot.
The top health body in France, where vaccine hesitancy is
high, recommended that those over 55 who had received a first
dose of the AstraZeneca shot get a new-style messenger-RNA
vaccine for the second one.
Two messenger RNA vaccines have been approved for use in
France, one from Pfizer and BioNTech and
another from Moderna.
(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux worldwide; writing by
Philippa Fletcher; editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Heinrich)
