Vaccine skepticism reigns in Erbil
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — It is an uncharacteristically gloomy day in Erbil, and the bazaar in the city centre is packed with shoppers and tourists. Very few of them are wearing masks.
As doses of the coronavirus vaccine trickle into Iraq, government authorities face widespread vaccine skepticism fuelled by disbelief in the coronavirus and distrust in the government – even though more than 3,500 people in the Kurdistan Region have died after contracting the virus.
Overlooking the crowded citadel area, a group of female school teachers collectively said they are not willing to use any vaccine brought by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Thirty-year-old Koya Khan told Rudaw English that she has family working for the Ministry of Health, but they won’t let her get vaccinated, or take it themselves.
“I have relatives in the Ministry of Health and they said they will not take it, because it’s Chinese,” claiming that “original” vaccines are only given to officials.
“It’s two kinds, one for the officials, and another for the poor people, that they would die from.”
Khan said the Kurdistan Region has good doctors, but she does not trust local medicine, saying medicine from abroad is “1,000 times better” than what is locally produced and imported by the KRG.
“If I go abroad I will take it. I trust vaccines, but not in Kurdistan.”
Gazang Rostam, another teacher, agreed with Khan – saying she is unsure if all citizens are given the same vaccine.
“Is the one used here for the officials the same as the one they give to other people, or is it different?”
“I am not ready to use it at all,” added Srwa Hawlery, 35, saying there is “no guarantee” the vaccine is original.
On a bench at the periphery of Shar Square sat Sheikh Mohammed Rasul, a retired farmer in his seventies. He and a friend told Rudaw English they will not take the vaccine.
Government policy during the pandemic has been illogical, Rasul said.
"When the pope came to visit, everyone was stuck together – so how come they didn't get coronavirus? And why have they closed the schools?" he asked.
Heavy-handed government and personal actions and measures is also part of the problem, he said. "Fear brings your defences down."
Sat beside him was friend and schoolteacher, Sherzad Qadir, who felt similarly. “The more people worry, the more likely it seems that they’ll get it,” he said.
People at the citadel are not the only skeptics when it comes to the coronavirus.
Cynicism around the treatment and even the existence of the virus is worldwide, fueled by medical scandals, and disparaging comments on vaccines by senior officials, to name a few. There have been anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests over the course of the pandemic, but vaccine skepticism also far predates COVID-19.
The compact, crowded citadel area could not contrast more with the expanse of the Park View complex in the northwest of the city. People we spoke to at the housing development’s shopping area mostly said they would take the vaccine, but only if they had to.
Kaniaw Chato, who works in human resources for an Erbil-based organisation, wore a cap and plastic cape as she got her hair coloured at a local salon. She contracted the virus in February.
“Because I’ve had corona before… I don’t think I need it,” Kaniaw said. “But if I need in order to be able to travel abroad, then of course I’ll take it.”
“I feel like it [coronavirus] is manmade, it’s a political thing that China is using. They made coronavirus themselves and they find vaccines for it themselves, so the trust we have in them might be less than in other countries.”
At an alcohol shop on the lower floor of the shopping complex, Naami, a Syrian who has lived in the Kurdistan Region for just over two years, also said he would take the vaccine, if he had to.
“If it’s a life or death situation, then yes, I’d take it,” he said. “If I had to take the vaccine, I’d take the Russian one… I trust the Russians when it comes to medicine.”
Even those who say they will be vaccinated if they are given the option are wary.
Hannah Hawezy, 15, is the daughter of a doctor. She and her mother had a lengthy conversation about the vaccine.
“You can’t trust most of the vaccines because of some factors, she has to make sure which vaccines [we can take]... in case of any sensitivity we have,” she said, stood with two of her friends.
Hannah’s friend Saz Barzo, a 14-year-old born in the UK, said her family would “probably do it there” because the UK-produced AstraZeneca vaccine is “more trusted.”
Countries in Europe and elsewhere are undertaking mass immunisation campaigns that aim to have entire national populations vaccinated by the end of the year. But in less well-off countries, including Iraq, vaccinating the whole population will take a matter of years, not months. The aim this year is for 20 percent of the population to be vaccinated, the health ministry has previously said.
Iraq’s first coronavirus vaccine doses arrived on March 1. Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Masrour Barzani described it as “an important milestone in our fight against COVID-19.” First to receive a dose of the Sinopharm vaccine gifted by China was Goran Othman, a health worker at the intensive care unit in Erbil's West Emergency Hospital on March 2.
On top of the 50,000 China has already donated to Iraq, the foreign ministry said last week that China said it would gift Iraq another 200,000 vaccine doses “in the near future." The Russian vaccine, proven in phase three trials to be 91.6 percent effective, is to arrive in Iraq in the coming weeks too, Iraqi health minister Hassan al-Tamimi told state media last week.
On March 9, KRG health ministry spokesperson Aso Hawezy said that it is not yet clear when enough vaccine doses for all six million of the Kurdistan Region’s inhabitants will arrive. Cardiologists have said that the Region is now in a new wave of infections.
The urgency for a resolution to the pandemic is growing. Cases of the coronavirus in the Kurdistan Region have been rising since December. Iraq’s health ministry announced on Wednesday that it had registered a record high of 5,663 cases in 24 hours. Also on Wednesday, the KRG health ministry said that it had recorded 541 cases in a single day -- the highest number it has seen in months.
With the approach of Newroz, when family and friends gather to celebrate the biggest holiday in the Kurdistan Region, health officials have voiced alarm that the number of cases will skyrocket. Provincial officials across the Kurdistan Region have said that people will be able to have Newroz celebrations this year, but no parties or crowds are allowed.
Many of the cases recently recorded have been of coronavirus variants. In mid-February, the health ministry announced that it had recorded its first case of the UK variant. Results of the performance of vaccines against variants have varied from country to country.
The health ministry said on Sunday that it is launching a public awareness campaign around the vaccine, with people to be trained and sent across governorates in the next 14 days to deliver information.
“We as the Ministry of Health, in coordination with Iraq’s Ministry of Health, have started a wide awareness campaign for the people,” Hawezy told Rudaw English on Monday.
A batch of 1.15 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine was due to arrive in Iraq on Monday, Hawezy said. The Kurdistan Region’s share “might be more than 180,000 doses” – but the delivery has not arrived.
Some European countries have pulled use of the AstraZeneca vaccine because of fears it can cause blood clots. However, the European Medicines Agency said it remains “firmly convinced” of the vaccine’s benefits, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said it considers the vaccine safe for use.
“We will use the vaccine without doubts for as long as they [WHO] don’t confirm it,” Hawezy said of the blood clot fears.
Priority cases for vaccination are medical staff, then “local security forces, the elderly, and the chronically ill,” he said. “This is a general standard -- we aren’t the ones who have determined it.”
The KRG is in direct talks with pharmaceutical companies for vaccine doses so that it is not entirely dependent on Baghdad, he added.
The best way to convince the public of the benefits and safety of the coronavirus vaccines is through word of mouth, according to one pharmacist working in the Ronaki neighbourhood of Erbil. “I would take it myself,” he said.
Othman, the first recipient of the vaccine in the Kurdistan Region did just that, encouraging everyone to get vaccinated.
"It is a special feeling to start the vaccination process in the Kurdistan Region and for me to be the first person to get the vaccine. Hopefully everyone in Kurdistan will get access to it,” he said.