The European Union’s medicines regulator declared the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 jab, which is still undergoing clinical trials, as safe to use following its suspension in several EU countries that reported blood clots in some patients who received the vaccine.
While the vaccine distributor received the green light to continue its rollout in EU countries that approved it, a polling firm called YouGov determined that trust in the Astrazeneca vaccine has significantly plummeted in some parts of Europe, particularly in Spain, France, Italy and Germany.
AstraZeneca and all other COVID-19 vaccines are still undergoing clinical trials and have only been approved for emergency use. Despite the lack of confidence in the vaccine by some EU members, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced the vaccine to be “safe and effective” to use.
Unlike Pfizer and Moderna, which use a relatively new form of mRNA-based technology for vaccines, AstraZeneca is made from a traditional old-school method that uses a weakened version of a common cold virus. If you had the choice, would you rather get an mRNA-based vaccine or one that uses the old-school method?