* Concerns about possible side effects slow rollouts
* Even health workers refusing shot in some countries
* Mixed messages over expiry dates adds to confusion
By Maggie Fick
NAIROBI, May 4 (Reuters) - When Edith Serem received her
COVID-19 vaccination last month at a hospital in Nairobi where
she works as a doctor, nurses jokingly warned she might start
speaking in a foreign language.
Serem said some colleagues got the AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) AZN.L shot
after watching her closely for several days to see if she was
okay, but others refused, still wary of possible side effects.
Health experts worry that public scepticism about taking the
relatively small number of doses African countries have battled
to procure could prolong a pandemic that has already killed more
than 3.3 million people worldwide. "I'm not an anti-vaxxer ... I have my children vaccinated up
to date with everything out there, but this one? I'm not
comfortable," said a doctor in Kenya, who declined to be named
as she was not authorised to speak to the media.
"If there is no data on long-term effects then we are all
being guinea pigs. What happens in 10 years after this vaccine?"
So-called vaccine hesitancy is a global phenomenon. France
and the United States are struggling with it and scepticism is
on the rise in some Asian countries such as Japan.
In Africa, health experts say a combination of warnings
about possible rare blood clots, the rubbishing of vaccines by
some leaders and mixed messages over expiry dates have all
contributed to the slow rollout across the continent.
COVID-19 has also not hit Africa's 1.3 billion people to the
extent it has ravaged some countries in Europe, Brazil, the
United States and India, leaving some on the continent doubting
the seriousness of the disease.
The official death toll in Africa now stands at 121,000,
lower than the United Kingdom alone.
Last week, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), John Nkengasong, again
implored citizens to stay vigilant, calling India's COVID-19
disaster a wake-up call. AND SUSPICIOUS
While Ghana and Rwanda have all but finished administering
the doses they received last month, the rollout in some
countries is so slow it could take years to use the limited
shots they have, let alone inoculate their adult populations.
Kenya, for example, began vaccinating 400,000 frontline
health staff and other essential workers in early March after
receiving more than a million AstraZeneca doses from the global
vaccine sharing scheme COVAX.
By April 25, Kenya had only vaccinated 152,700 health
workers, health ministry data shows.
Chibanzi Mwachonda, head of Kenya's main doctors union, said
the government had now offered the doses more widely because of
the slow uptake of the vaccines, which the United Nations says
will expire on June 28.
Health workers were already angry and suspicious because the
government had failed to provide enough protective equipment,
Mwachonda said. Now, many felt the government had not adequately
addressed concerns about possible side effects, he said.
Kenya's health ministry did not respond to a request for
comment.
Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, received its first
consignment of 3.92 million AstraZeneca shots on March 2. By
April 23, just over 1.15 million doses had been administered.
At that pace, it could take until mid-August to use the
doses and nearly a decade to vaccinate the adult population. The
shots will expire on July 9, a government official said.
Chika Offor, founder of the Vaccine Network for Disease
Control advocacy group in Abuja, said the decision by some
European governments to restrict or stop using AstraZeneca shots
had compounded Nigerian fears. In Ivory Coast, vaccination centres have been quieter than
expected, raising fears that doses will be left unused when they
expire in June, two health workers at the National Institute of
Public Hygiene told Reuters.
The West African country vaccinated 105,110 people between
March 1 and April 21 after receiving an initial shipment of
504,000 doses. At that rate, it would take more than two years
to use the 1.7 million doses it has ordered from COVAX so far.
The health workers said some centres in Abobo, a suburb of
the main city Abidjan, were only getting 20 people a day coming
in for shots. In Treichville, a densely populated area of the
city, Reuters saw health workers sitting idle with no patients.
Joseph Benie, director of the hygiene institute, said they
had issued public statements about the vaccine's safety.
PUBLIC CONFUSION
Democratic Republic of Congo, meanwhile, received 1.7
million AstraZeneca doses from COVAX in early March.
It delayed their rollout after several European countries
suspended the vaccine to investigate rare blood clots but 10
days after its drive inoculation drive got underway, only 1,300
people in a country of 85 million had received a shot.
The government is now returning 1.3 million doses to COVAX
before they expire.
Africa CDC's Nkengasong said the slow uptake in Congo did
not surprise him as an Africa CDC survey found only 60% of
Congolese wanted the vaccine compared with 90% of Ethiopians.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Africa CDC have
repeatedly advised that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine
outweigh the risks.
Yet some African leaders have denounced the shots, including
Tanzania's recently-deceased president, Nigerian state governors
and the head of a South African nurses union. Mixed messaging about vaccine expiry dates has added to the
confusion.
The WHO and Africa CDC urged African countries not to waste
donated vaccines after Malawi said it would destroy more than
16,000 AstraZeneca doses stamped with an April 13 expiry date.
Nkengasong said an analysis by the Serum Institute of India,
which made the doses, showed they could be used until July 13 -
but WHO's Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti, said they should be
stored until more information was available. "Haphazard vaccine rollout is dangerous," said Irungu
Houghton, executive director of Amnesty International Kenya.
"Public confusion at this time really feeds into vaccine
scepticism."
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Science vs skeptics: some in France struggle to trust in
AstraZeneca shot and tribulations of AstraZeneca's COVID-19
vaccine on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus
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