Covid-19 vaccines updates

Vaccine scepticism is helping to keep Romania and Bulgaria's Covid vaccination rates the lowest in the EU, exposing the union's poorest nations to higher risks amid a fourth wave of the pandemic fuelled by the contagious Delta variant.

Fraud is adding to official frustration in Romania over take-up rates, with instances of doctors allowing people to go without jabs while still issuing them with certificates that help to make it easier to work and travel.

"A lot of people have postponed their vaccination until now," Ioana Mihaila, the country's health minister, told the Financial Times. "We understand their concerns and it's their right to do research about all the vaccines and make an informed decision, but now it's the time to make this decision as the risk of getting infected will surge."

Gindrovel Dumitra, the president of the vaccination group at the National Society of Family Medicine, told the FT that patients indeed often ask for the paper but not the jab. Those few doctors who do not resist endanger all of society, he said.

Among doctors implicated in such "sink vaccinations" — so-called in Romania because the vaccine ends up down the drain — is a physician suspected of issuing fake certificates for her husband's football team, which then went on to play in tournaments, the Digi24 channel reported. It is not clear whether any infections resulted from that incident, but Romanian media have reported on other infections where patients carried fake vaccination certificates.

"Vaccination [going into] the sink and issuing documents based on such a procedure is [illegal] but it is also about medical liability," Dumitra said. "An unvaccinated person can get sick, [and] endanger not only his own health but also that of others."

Andrei Baciu, vice-president of the National Coordinating Committee for Vaccination Activities against Covid-19 (CNCAV), estimated that there had been over 400 fake cases out of more than 2m certificates issued. Other estimates are higher, with some doctors saying every vaccination site in the country has received patients trying to get paperwork without jabs.

Just over a quarter of Romania's eligible citizens have received full vaccinations, the second-lowest take-up rate among EU countries behind Bulgaria's 17 per cent, according to the FT's vaccine tracker.

Both are also far behind EU peers in data from the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC). All other EU countries have vaccinated at least half of their populations.

Officials in Romania and Bulgaria put the low rates down to a rural and less educated population, snags in vaccine deliveries and a general mistrust of medicine, exacerbated by online fake news.

"Initially I did not trust the vaccine and I wanted to wait to see how people react to it," said a 51-year-old Romanian who gave his name as Alin, citing ambiguous information about the use, side-effects and efficacy of various vaccines. "I read absolutely all pros and cons . . . I wouldn't get vaccinated, I don't want to introduce something not tested enough in my body. "

Romania and Bulgaria both have recorded quickly rising case numbers, with daily new cases rising to about 1,500 in each country by early September, the highest level since early May.

Both countries suffered badly during the third wave in the spring, when central and south-eastern European countries were among the highest in the world for deaths per capita. Case numbers plummeted in the summer, putting people at ease again.

"They seemed to believe that we had overcome the pandemic," Bulgarian chief state health inspector Angel Kunchev acknowledged in an email interview with the FT, adding that the government had been working hard to try to motivate everyone to get vaccinated.

"The immunisation coverage that we have is not satisfactory," Kunchev said.

Bulgaria started its vaccination drive slowly this year, centring its purchases on AstraZeneca shots, which were cheaper and easier to store. It bought far fewer mRNA shots than it was allotted under the EU's purchase scheme — a strategy that backfired when AstraZeneca deliveries suffered setbacks.

Kunchev says fear of being vaccinated was being exacerbated by fake news on social media but said that as the school year starts, people begin to realise that the pandemic is not over.

"I think we can handle it," he said. "We also have experience from previous waves of the pandemic. In recent weeks we have seen an increase in the number of people willing to be immunised and I believe we can talk about a tendency."

Romania has tried to make it as easy as possible to be vaccinated, with jabs available on demand on presentation of ID at a vaccination site. Warehouses are so well stocked that the country even offered South Korea an emergency shipment of 1.5m doses of mRNA vaccines.

Health minister Mihaila said the government would deliver vaccines to patients' doors and even offer prizes as incentives. "In big cities, where transmission rates are always higher, the overall vaccination rate is (already) about 50%," she said. "Each vaccinated person counts."