Warsaw: As 83-year-old Hanna Zimentara endured subfreezing temperatures to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot in Warsaw, her 30-year-old grandson was starting a Canary Islands vacation while trying to protect his grandmother’s Was denying repeated pleas and stubbornly refusing. ,
“I am worried about him, but I have no influence on him. None,” said Ziantara. “He has many doctor friends who are not vaccinated, and they say that if they are not vaccinated So they don’t need it.”
Poland and several other countries in Central and Eastern Europe are grappling with their latest surge of coronavirus cases and deaths, recording much lower vaccination rates than Western Europe.
In Russia, more than 1,200 people died with COVID-19 every day for several days in most of November and December, and the daily death toll remains more than 1,100. Ukraine, which is recording hundreds of virus deaths a day, is emerging from its deadliest phase of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the death rate in Poland, while lower than in the spring, has recently reported more than 500 deaths per day and is still not peaking. Intensive care units are full, and doctors report that more and more children are needing hospitalization, including some who passed on COVID-19 without symptoms but then had a stroke.
The situation has created a dilemma for Poland’s government, which has urged citizens to get vaccinated but clearly worries about alienating voters who oppose a vaccine mandate or any restrictions on economic life. We do.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki publicly received his vaccine booster last week and urged others to get their shots at Christmas to protect older adults. He added that some family gatherings during the pandemic “sadly ended, with our grandparents leaving.”
In a bid to promote vaccines, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski reported Monday that 1085 people under the age of 44 have died of COVID-19 in Poland so far this year, of whom only 3 percent were fully vaccinated. went. “This black statistic could be different thanks to vaccination,” he said.
A health system already stretched to its limits, Poland’s government announced on Tuesday that it is requiring doctors, other medical personnel, teachers and uniformed staff such as police officers, members of the military and firefighters to be vaccinated by March 1. .
Critics of the right-wing government condemned the move of little late, while a far-right party, the Confederation, described it as discriminatory against uneducated Poles.
Resistance to vaccines in Eastern Europe is rooted in mistrust of pharmaceutical companies and government officials, while propaganda also appears to play a role.
Concerned Grandma Ziantara received a Pfizer vaccine booster dose on Tuesday, after the Polish government reported 504 more deaths, raising the death toll from the pandemic in the country of 38 million to more than 86,000.
Sitting nearby was Andrzej Wiajecki, 56, who needed no convincing to come for the booster shot. He said several of his friends are hospitalized with COVID-19, including an already healthy and athletic 32-year-old man who is fighting for his life.
“I expect him to die, especially since there is no room for him in the intensive care unit because there are so many patients that he is lying somewhere in a corridor,” he said.
“He didn’t want to get vaccinated,” Wiazecki said. “Even his siblings haven’t been vaccinated, and even if he’s dying, they don’t want to be vaccinated.”
The country has a higher coronavirus vaccination rate than some of the surrounding countries, with 54 percent of Poles fully vaccinated. Ukraine’s vaccination rate is 27 percent, and in Russia, where home-grown vaccines such as Spuntic V are available, it is around 41 percent. Bulgaria, which, like Poland, belongs to the European Union, has a vaccination rate of 26 percent, the lowest in the bloc.
The discovery of the Omicron variant last month has sparked fears in Poland, where experts believe the variant is likely already underway, although no cases have been confirmed. Several important questions about Omicron remain unanswered, including whether the virus causes milder or more severe disease and how much it can protect against previous COVID-19 illness or immunity from vaccines.
According to Polish media reports, the emergence of the variant prompted some holdouts to eventually get their first vaccine shot in the southern mountainous region of Podhale, where vaccination rates are well below the national average.
But at the vaccination center in Warsaw, located in the blood donation center, the number of first-timers was not high. Coordinator Paula Rekavec said only one person had come to the center in the first three hours on Tuesday to request an initial dose.
Warsaw restaurant owner Artur Jerzynski has found a business opportunity in the high level of vaccine resistance. Their popular Der Elephant was the first restaurant in Poland, and until recently, the only one that required customers to show proof of vaccination to enter.
Jerzynski said that while traveling in Western Europe, he was asked for proof of vaccination for eating food and thought it was a good practice. When he first introduced the requirement in Der Elephant, anti-vaxxers who demonstrated in front of parliament lodged a protest at his restaurant and demanded police protection. Jerzynski says he, too, was bombarded by hateful phone calls for a few days.
Yet many patrons appreciate the rare public space where they can feel safe while enjoying food, such as mussel soup, steak, and other fare served for lunch on Tuesdays. One diner, Risjord Kowalski, said he loved knowing that everyone around him had been vaccinated, but the restaurant’s policy was proof that “there is no need for government orders” to create a safe environment. “.
But Jerzynski has not yet dared to enforce the vaccine requirement in many of his other Warsaw restaurants.
He described Der Elephant as “an island in a country of about 40 million people, which, on the one hand, makes us happy, but it is also sad that we are such a small island.”
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