While racing to combat new variants, countries are grappling with uncertainties about vaccine supplies and how protective various shots will be
First came the good news. The European Union authorized a third vaccine. Then, the bad news. Regulators in country after country suggested restricting it to younger people until more testing was done.
The decisions marked the start of a delicate new phase of vaccination drives, one in which a growing menu of coronavirus vaccines was accompanied by contentious debates about who should be given which shots.
Those debates are a testament to the world’s good fortune in having several strong vaccines only a year into the pandemic. But every vaccine comes with its own idiosyncrasies, including gaps in clinical trial data. And that has thrown up agonizing choices for countries already struggling to administer shots, forcing health officials to weigh their qualms about certain vaccines with the need to inoculate people before dangerous variants take hold.
After the EU authorized the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine last week, adding a third shot to the bloc’s arsenal, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Lithuania, Poland, Austria and Sweden all said they would restrict it to younger people or were considering doing so, citing a scarcity of data on the vaccine’s efficacy in older people.
Under those plans, older people would instead be scheduled to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, potentially leaving them unvaccinated for a period even as younger people are inoculated with the AstraZeneca shot.
But those strategies, tangled as they may be, will at least make a new vaccine available to younger people, scientists said, a scenario far preferable to no one receiving AstraZeneca’s shot.
Some scientists are now urging the United States to adopt the same approach, as the country remains without an alternative to the hard-to-store Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Its regulators refuse to authorize AstraZeneca’s shot until another clinical trial generates more data, including on how it works in older people.
In the absence of that data, targeting the vaccine to those in whom it is known to be effective was an urgently needed stopgap, scientists said — all the more so now that the virus is rapidly acquiring new and dangerous mutations.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine had 62% efficacy at two full doses in clinical trials, but it protected all participants against severe illness or death.
In Italy, rumors quickly began to spread about who would receive which vaccine. News reports suggested the AstraZeneca shot would be reserved for younger essential workers, like soldiers, teachers and janitors.
But Italians spotted a hole in the plan: Some hundreds of thousands of public workers are too old to be allowed an AstraZeneca shot, but too young to qualify yet for an mRNA vaccine.
Salvatrice Alario, 65, a primary school Italian and art history teacher in Catania, Sicily, is among those who now fears that she is one of the people caught in the middle, with little chance of soon being vaccinated.
“If I could choose, I’d like to get the safest one, but more than anything, I would like to get vaccinated as soon as possible,” Alario said. “I am scared, like everyone.”
Age limits have also thrown vaccine plans into flux in Germany, where an immunization committee authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine only for adults under 65. Given the limited supplies in Germany, those shots are likely to be reserved for younger medical workers and nursing home aides.
Still, some people resisted taking AstraZeneca’s shot, rather than Pfizer’s — a sign of the way people may grow choosier as more vaccines are authorized.
Scientists have largely advised people to accept the first vaccine they are offered, given the widespread protections against severe disease and the societal need to tamp down the emergence of new variants.
• So far, countries have largely tailored vaccine offerings based on where the shots can be stored and transported
• The mRNA vaccines must be kept at very cold temperatures, making it difficult to reach older people in rural areas
• The AstraZeneca vaccine, which can be stored in normal refrigerators, would be a boon to older, harder-to-reach residents. But limiting it to younger people would undo those advantages
4,000 variants of coronavirus: UK Minister
There are around 4,000 variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 around the world now so all vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc are trying to improve their vaccines, a British minister said.
Thousands of variants of the type of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 have been documented as the virus mutates, including the so-called British, South African and Brazilian variants which appear to spread more swiftly than others.
All manufacturers, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and others are looking at how they can improve their vaccine to make sure that we are ready for any variant - there are about 4,000 variants around the world of COVID now.
While thousands of variants have arisen as the virus mutates on replication, only a very small minority are likely to be important and to change the virus in an appreciable way, according to the British Medical Journal.
