French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday there are lingering questions about the Chinese vaccine, and he even suggested that an ineffective vaccine could help develop a new virus variant.
Macron said there has been “no information” about the trials of the vaccine from Sinopharma and Sinovac. Fortune magazine reported that neither company published its Phase III trial data and only produced claims of their effectiveness. Sinopharm claims its shot is 79 percent effective; Sinovac has not released its data on efficacy.
This was not the first time Macron has expressed doubt about some of the vaccines. He pointed to AstraZeneca’s vaccine and claims that it is not effective to those over 65, the South China Morning Post reported.
A new survey showed lingering concerns about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, despite assurances from national health organizations that the inoculation is perfectly safe for most people.
The Guardian reported that about four in ten people in France and more than 25 percent of Americans say they definitely will not be taking or are unlikely to take the first round of vaccines. Kantar Public carried out a survey that showed about 11 percent of Americans and 13 percent of the French trust their governments to produce an effective vaccine.
Emmanuel Rivière, Kantar’s director of international polling, told the paper that vaccine hesitancy “remains for large minorities in France, Germany, and the US, where citizens can be twice or three times as likely to trust their family doctor as they are of the central government. This will clearly need to be reflected in governments’ campaigns.”
TRENDPOST: Given that the COVID-19 vaccines were approved under Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA, Dr. Charlie Weller, Head of Vaccines at Wellcome Trust in London, made clear, “As vaccine rollout is just beginning, many unanswered questions remain. Ongoing monitoring will help us identify any consistent patterns of adverse events.”
This was a more polite way of stating what the head of the infectious disease unit at Samson Assuta Ashdod Hospital told the Jerusalem Post in November: “There is a race to get the public vaccinated, so we are willing to take more risks.”
