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Angela Merkel refuses Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine as 1.4m doses go unused in Germany
German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will not have the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine because it is not recommended for her age group.
The German authorities have not approved the vaccine for people over 65 due to lack of data about its efficacy in older people.
A shortfall in take-up has sparked calls for Mrs Merkel, 66, to "lead by example" and get vaccinated on camera in order to ease the concerns of the German public.
“AstraZeneca is a reliable vaccine, effective and safe, approved by the European Medicines Agency and recommended in Germany up to the age of 65 years,” said Ms Merkel.
“All the authorities tell us that this vaccine can be trusted. As long as vaccines are as scarce as they are now, you cannot choose what to vaccinate with.”
When asked whether she would accept the UK jab, the German Chancellor added: “I am 66 years old and I do not belong to the recommended group for AstraZeneca”.
Despite calls for Ms Merkel to take the jab, she stood firm in her decision to not get the vaccine, telling Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper: "I do not belong to the recommended age group for AstraZeneca.”
Germany has accumulated 1.4 million vaccine doses which are currently going unused because of a reluctance to take the AstraZeneca jab.
Thomas Mertens, head of STIKO, Germany’s standing commission on vaccines, said Germany’s refusal to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine for people over 65 was “partially to blame”.
At Berlin’s Tegel vaccination centre, where only the AstraZeneca jab is available, only 200 people turned up for 3,800 appointments on one day, The Times reported.
Professor Mertens added that there was a “problem” persuading people to have the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab due to flawed perceptions about its effectiveness.
“We have about 1.4 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine in store and only about 240,000 have been given to the people,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We are working quite hard on this point and try to convince the people to accept the vaccine.”
The European Commission has acquired over 2 billion vaccine shots with several companies, but only three have been authorised so far: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
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