Confidence in the safety of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine has been significantly damaged in Spain, Germany, France and Italy following a small number of reports of people who had blood clots after receiving the jab, according to a new survey.

A poll conducted by analytics firm YouGov, which covered about 8,000 people between March 12 and March 18, asked people to state whether they thought the jab was safe, unsafe or they didn't know. 

It found a growing number of people in France, Germany, Spain and Italy thought the AstraZeneca jab was more unsafe than safe.

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French most doubtful 

The highest proportion (61 percent) of people who believed the shot was unsafe was in France, an 18 percent rise from the same survey carried out in February before a small number of reports of blood clots emerged.

Elsewhere, 55 percent of people in Germany felt the jab was now unsafe (up from 40 percent in February), as did 52 percent of people in Spain (up from 25 percent) and 43 percent of people in Italy (up from 27 percent).

In the UK, the proportion of people believing the vaccine is unsafe has more than doubled from February, but only from 4 to 9 percent.

Fewer believe jab safe

While the survey shows more people believe the jab is unsafe, it also shows fewer believe it's safe. Only 23 percent of people surveyed in France now have confidence in its safety, a drop of 10 percent on last month's survey, while the number people who believed the jab was safe in Italy (36 percent), Germany (32 percent) and Spain (38 percent) also fell month-on-month.

At least 13 European countries halted the use of the jab, following the reports of a small number of blood clots. Many have since resumed its use after Europe's drugs regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said in a preliminary safety review on Thursday the vaccine was safe and effective and not linked with a rise in the overall risk of blood clots.

The EMA did not, however, rule out a possible link between blood clots and the vaccine.

YouGov also said there appeared to be no concerns across Europe about the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, with a high percentage of people in each country believing they were still safe.