A crisis threatens to engulf Angela Merkel’s government over her decision to suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine along with 15 other EU countries, which the Italian medicines regulator admitted was a “political decision”.

Sweden and Portugal became the latest EU countries to pause use of the vaccine, despite EU regulators and the World Health Organisation saying the Oxford University jab was safe and vaccinations lagging far behind the UK, US and Israel, after reports of seven deaths from blood clots.

There was fury in Berlin after Germany on Monday joined France, Italy and Spain in stopping the roll-out of the vaccine, until the results of a European Medicines Agency (EMA) probe into blood clots caused by the jab on Thursday.

Germany’s national disease centre warned that the country is now in a third wave and facing an exponential rise in cases that could see it break previous records by Easter.

Mrs Merkel’s closest ally, the Bavarian regional leader Markus Söder, made his feelings clear, telling German television he was ready to take the vaccine “immediately”.

Her main coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD) publicly condemned the decision as a “U-turn” that suggested the government has “no clear policy”. Germany, France and the Netherlands all said the vaccine was safe last week before later suspending the jabs.

One senior SPD politician went further, describing the move as a “disaster” and calling on the health minister, Jens Spahn, to resign. The opposition Free Democrat Party called for an inquiry and said Mrs Merkel’s government had “unnecessarily endangered human lives”.

“The bottom line, sadly, is that this good and effective vaccine is not being accepted by the public in many countries because of the row and the suspension,” said Frank Ulrich Montgomery, the German head of the World Medical Association.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/merkels-government-war-over-astrazeneca-115706682.html