Suspension of AstraZeneca: "We lost two days of vaccination"

Philippe Juvin, head of emergencies at the Parisian hospital Georges-Pompidou, lamented at the microphone of Europe Evening that the flash suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine injections caused the French vaccine campaign to be two days late.

He denounces a political decision taken by the French authorities.

INTERVIEW

Tainted trust and a waste of time.

After 48 hours of floating, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) reaffirmed Thursday that the vaccine against the coronavirus developed by AstraZeneca is "safe and effective".

The suspension of injections of this product on French soil will therefore have lasted only two days and will resume on Friday afternoon.

But "we lost two days of vaccination" laments at the microphone of Europe Evening Philippe Juvin, head of emergencies at the Parisian hospital Georges-Pompidou and LR mayor of La Garenne-Colombes. 

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Certainly, "it is a vaccine which, like all drugs has side effects," concedes the caregiver.

But "out of the 20 million people who have received AstraZeneca, there have been 25 cases of thrombosis [blood clots, ed], some of which are serious".

For Philippe Juvin, the real question behind possible risks associated with this vaccine is therefore "the number of deaths that we would have had if we had not vaccinated these 20 million people". 

Thus, taking the example of Belgium which has never stopped injections, the head of emergency at the Parisian hospital Georges-Pompidou believes that the French suspension "was a political decision, driven by the similar decision taken by Germany ", a few minutes earlier.

"The French authorities did not want to take any political risk," he summarizes. 

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"The risk-benefit balance is very much in favor of AstraZeneca"

Still, this lightning suspension "probably increased an unjustified distrust of the AstraZeneca".

And Philippe Juvin is not wrong, since according to an Elabe poll for BFMTV published on Tuesday March 16, only 20% of French people say they are confident about the Swedish-British vaccine.

So the specialist takes advantage of his time on the air to hammer home that "the risk-benefit balance is very much in favor of AstraZeneca".

"There is a lot more risk in not getting the vaccine than in getting the vaccine." 

And to convince the French of the need for this injection, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced during his health press conference that he would be vaccinated on Friday.