(As of April 5, more than 20.6 million people there have received their first AstraZeneca shot, compared to 11 million Pfizer-BioNTech recipients). Accordingly, the shot has made up a relatively large proportion of all shots given in the U.K. Moreover, as more people get inoculated and very few have severe side effects, those who felt cautious at first may eventually be convinced to get vaccinated themselves, says Scott Ratzan, a professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Health Communication.ĪstraZeneca’s vaccine has also had slightly more time to succeed in the U.K. rollout helped it build momentum, experts say. For example, public health officials decided to delay recipients’ second doses in order to administer first doses to more people-an untested approach that, for now, appears to have paid off. Why?įor one thing, the country “went all stops out” to vaccinate as many people as possible from the start, says Heidi Larson, the founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. ![]() In the U.K., confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine took a minor hit after the blood clotting reports first emerged, but the British are still significantly more likely than the French or the Germans to see that shot as safe. Obviously, the U.K., Germany, France and the U.S all have different on-the-ground realities, but each offers a valuable case study into the potential consequences of a vaccine pause in terms of public trust. ![]() But Europe’s experience offers warnings about the potential damage such a halt can cause. If the J&J pause reveals key new data about the vaccine’s safety, it may prove worthwhile. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom-where use of the AstraZeneca vaccine was limited by age, rather than paused entirely-distrust has held relatively steady. After France and Germany temporarily halted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine over similar blood clotting issues in March, skepticism of that shot among residents has increased precipitously, according to YouGov polling. To help answer that question, we can look to Europe. (Trust in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines appears unaffected, and a separate Axios-Ipsos poll found that most Americans believe the pause was the right move.) Those findings have fueled a debate among scientists, researchers and others: is it wise to pause a vaccine’s use after only six blood clotting cases were identified after 6.8 million shots were distributed, given the potential blow to public trust? public trust in the vaccine: Before the announcement, 52% of respondents said that the J&J shot was safe, compared with just 37% after the pause. However temporary it might be, a recent YouGov/Economist survey suggests that the J&J pause has already hurt U.S.
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