Increasingly more countries suspend the use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine due to the reports of side effects in the form of blood clots.
The countries that have suspended the use of AstraZeneca
On March 15, the German Ministry of Health announced that the country suspended the use of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine in order to check the reports of side effects.
A few hours later, France, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Portugal and Cyprus also backed the decision, suspending the use of the vaccine.
Previously, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Ireland, Luxembourg, as well as non-EU European countries Norway and Iceland announced their full or partial termination of the drug.
In addition to European countries, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, Thailand (there were some doubts regarding the vaccine effectiveness against the local coronavirus strain).
AstraZeneca's response
At the same time, AstraZeneca, having analyzed information about 17 million people who had been vaccinated in the UK and the EU, has shown no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots
“A careful review of all available safety data of more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union and the UK with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia, in any defined age group, gender, batch or in any particular country,” the company said.
What is known about the AstraZeneca vaccine
The AZD1222 vaccine was jointly developed by scientists from the UK (Oxford University) and Sweden (AstraZeneca). Preliminary results of the drug study were published in the Lancet journal in August 2020. The study showed that a single vaccination with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) expresses a codon-optimised coding sequence for the spike protein (GenBank accession number MN908947). In rhesus macaques, a single vaccination with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 induced humoral and cellular immune responses. Protection against lower respiratory tract infection was observed in vaccinated non-human primates after the high-dose SARS-CoV-2 challenge.
However, even at the stage of research, the drug trial had to be suspended due to the death of one of the vaccinated people. Later, the doctors concluded that his death was not related to the vaccine and the trials had continued.
What does the WHO say?
The World Health Organization has stated that that there have been no documented deaths linked to COVID-19 vaccines after several nations suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s shot to probe possible side-effects.
As WHO chief scientific officer Sumiya Swaminathan stressed, despite the fact that countries have begun to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to check the reports on possible side effects, there have not been any deaths in the world as a result of vaccination against COVID-19.
The WHO Committee will hold a meeting on AstraZeneca
The World Health Organization Vaccine Safety Committee will hold a meeting on the coronavirus vaccine AstraZeneca on March 16.
"The WHO Committee on Vaccine Safety has considered the available data in cooperation with the European Medicines Agency, and its meeting will be held tomorrow (March 16, Apostrophe)," said the WHO Director-General Tedros Gebreyesus.
Ukraine will not suspend the use of the analogue of AstraZeneca
In Ukraine, the coronavirus vaccine Covishield is used, which is the Indian analogue of the AstraZeneca vaccine. At the moment, there are no plans to suspend the use of the vaccine.
According to Ukraine's Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov, there are no side effects of the vaccine recorded in Ukraine that could lead to its suspension. He stressed that Ukraine is not even considering stopping the vaccinations with AstraZeneca/Covishield – the only drug available in Ukraine now.