ROME — The mayor of Cremona, one of the northern Italian towns
first hammered by the coronavirus during the pandemic’s initial explosion in
Europe, received a call over the weekend that the local vaccination center was
empty. The region’s booking system had failed to set up appointments with older
residents, leaving more than 500 doses of vaccine at risk of going to waste.
اضافة اعلان
“There was staff, there were also vaccines, but there were no
people,” said the mayor, Gianluca Galimberti, adding that the situation had been
bad for weeks.
Similar scenarios are playing out throughout the country, as
authorities struggle to get vaccines to older and vulnerable Italians who most
need them.
Europe’s vaccination efforts are moving at a maddeningly slow
pace compared with those in United States and Britain. The temporary suspension
by multiple countries of AstraZeneca, the vaccine that the European Union has
bet on, was only one indication of how Europe’s rollouts have been plagued by
an overabundance of caution, bad deals and flouted obligations by
pharmaceutical companies that have created a supply shortage.
The situation remains dire enough that the European Union
unveiled emergency restrictions to curb exports of COVID-19 vaccines for six
weeks. But that drastic step is unlikely to solve many of the problems that
have plagued Europe’s vaccine rollouts.
Even when supply is not the issue, bureaucratic inertia,
strategic errors, a diffusion of responsibility and logistical problems in
booking appointments have seriously undercut vaccination efforts.
In Italy, those missteps have especially affected the older, and
most vulnerable, population. A full year after the country became the first
Western nation to confront the virus, it now has the dubious distinction of
having the highest rate of daily deaths from COVID-19 among Europe’s major
powers. About 1 in 5 people older than 80 have received both doses of a
vaccine, and about 5 percent of septuagenarians have received their first shot.
When it comes to distributing vaccines, Italy is on par with
France and Germany and a little behind Spain, but its difficulties in vaccinating
older citizens have constituted a lethal failure in a country that has the
oldest population in Europe.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi recognized the problem in a speech
to the Italian Senate on Wednesday, saying that while the pace of vaccinations was
beginning to increase, it was “crucial to first vaccinate our elderly and
fragile citizens who have more to fear for the consequences of the virus.”
To speed things up, his new government has sought to centralize
the response, putting a general in charge and mobilizing the military and an
army of new vaccinators — a departure in a country where much authority has
been given to regional leaders over time.
Such steps underscore Europe’s rising desperation in the midst
of a brutal third wave.
Italy’s infection fatality rate reduced only slightly during the
first two months of its vaccination campaign, forcing the government to try to
protect its unvaccinated citizens with a nearly national lockdown that began
March 15.
Italians, who have been through so much, are searching for
reasons for their latest affliction.
In its initial rollout in late December, Italy gave the Pfizer
vaccine to health care workers, giving it an early lead in Europe. But its plan
was then to make large use of the cheaper and easier-to-store AstraZeneca
vaccine, which has since been dogged by supply shortages and various concerns
about its safety and efficacy.
Italy and other major European countries briefly suspended the
vaccine’s use over worries that it possibly caused blood clots in a handful of
cases. This week, US regulators raised concerns that the company may have
skewed data to make the vaccine look more effective than it is.
Even before the recent chaos, Italy’s version of the Food and
Drug Administration recommended that the vaccine’s use be limited to “individuals
between 18 and 55 years” because of questions about how well the vaccine worked
for older people.
As a result, Italy moved early on to vaccinate teachers within
the age range, but also lawyers, prosecutors and hospital administrative staff.
Older people, vulnerable and frustrated, went unvaccinated, while Italy’s death
rates remained high. 551 people died of the virus, the most since January.
Draghi said that differing approaches by the regions to
vaccinating people over the age of 80 was unacceptable, adding that some “neglect
their elderly to favor groups who claim priority based probably on some
contractual power.”
In Tuscany, a region usually admired for its health care system,
only about 6 percent of people over the age of 80 have been fully vaccinated,
prompting a public letter from leading citizens.
“Inefficiency,” they wrote, “produces deaths.”
Matteo Villa, a researcher at the Italian Institute for
International Political Studies who has studied the coronavirus pandemic, said
that Italy’s strategy of first vaccinating only health care workers had
resulted in a bottleneck that made the virus more deadly.
“When the delays came,” he said, “we still had a lot of elderly
people to vaccinate.”
Guido Bertolaso, the former head of Italy’s civil protection
agency who is now in charge of the vaccine campaign in Lombardy, said the
country had failed to act on emergency footing.
He blamed pharmaceutical companies not making good on their
promised deliveries for Italy’s problems.
“When you plan, you must know where you get the vaccine, at what
time, which amount, on a weekly basis,” he said. In any case, he added, “In
Italy with planning, we are not very good.”
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