Unnecessary panic: Astra vaccine unmasks the great East-West divide

'Let's not become part of that war between the different firms, because it's already visible'

When European drug regulators acknowledged a link between AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine and a rare type of blood clots, it spread another dose of skepticism across the continent. But in the poorer east, the doubts are more over the findings than the shot.

Most western members of the European Union announced some restrictions of the vaccine’s use for younger age groups or halted it completely. The opposite happened across the east, with nine of 11 nations in the region deciding to keep administrating the shot to all adults.

“Let’s not create unnecessary panic,” Bulgarian Health Minister Kostadin Angelov said as he listed