Coronavirus: AZ jabs for cabinet in confidence-boosting move

What matters is the vaccination, not the vaccine, President Nicos Anastasiades said on Thursday while accompanying his government ministers to get the AstraZeneca jab at the Engomi vaccination centre.

Cabinet members turned up in the morning at the vaccination centre to receive the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine in a bid to boost people’s trust in the vaccine that has lost its popularity after it was linked with rare blood clots.

Anastasiades said the presence of all the ministers there, except for those who have already been vaccinated because their age group had already been called up, and Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides who is abroad, aims to send a strong message that “what matters is the vaccination, not the vaccine.”

Christodoulides will be vaccinated on Monday.

Anastasiades said that the cabinet’s vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine aims to send a message “that the minimal side effects or cases of side effects observed, cannot be an obstacle to mass vaccination that will create the prospects of herd immunity, but will also give the opportunity to restart the economy, for people to regain their freedom, to live a normal life.”

He called on people “not be influenced by what is written or said.”

So far, he said, more than 38 million people in the UK have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca, and there have been very few side effects.

“Therefore, once again I call on everyone in Cyprus who remain unvaccinated: Do not choose. Get vaccinated. I repeat, what matters is the vaccination, and not the vaccine.”

Asked if there was room for further easing measures at Easter, the president said the epidemiological team will decide after examining the situation.

Anastasiades got vaccinated last December with the Pfizer jab, which was the first vaccine to arrive in Cyprus, in a bid to encourage people do the same.