France's confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine is astonishingly low

AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine
(Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The public's confidence in AstraZeneca and Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine is down noticeably in Europe and especially in France, a new poll has found — just as a large U.S. trial shows it to be 79 percent effective.

YouGov found in a new poll that in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, "people are more likely to see the vaccine as unsafe than safe" after the vaccine's use was briefly paused there. This was particularly notable in France, where 61 percent of those surveyed said they think the vaccine is unsafe, up from 43 percent last month. In fact, just 23 percent of respondents in France said they believe the vaccine is safe. YouGov notes that even in February, though, more people in France thought the vaccine was unsafe than thought it was safe.

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Brendan Morrow

Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.