EU agency sharing findings on AstraZeneca Shot

London-European Union drug regulators with AstraZeneca Coronavirus Vaccines and rare blood clots late Wednesday, including recommendations that may have widespread implications for the use of shots, which are key to global efforts to end the pandemic.

Earlier this week, a senior European Medicines Agency official said there was a causal link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the rare blood clots found in dozens of people worldwide. shot.

Marco Cavaleri, health The Amsterdam-based agency’s threat and vaccine strategy, in a comment to the Rome Ilmesagero newspaper on Tuesday, said: “It is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that there is no causal relationship between AstraZeneca. vaccine And a very rare case of blood clots associated with low levels of platelets. “

However, Cavaleri admitted that authorities are not yet aware of how accurately the vaccine causes these rare side effects. Authorities said the evaluation “has not yet reached a conclusion and a review is currently underway.”

The EMA specifically focuses on two types of rare blood clots. One occurs in multiple blood vessels and the other in the veins that drain blood from the brain. We also evaluate reports from people with low platelet levels and at risk of severe bleeding.

EMA, World Health Organization and many more health Authorities have repeatedly stated that the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective, and that protection against COVID-19 outweighs the small risk of rare blood clots.

As last week, the EMA said, “There is no evidence to support limiting the use of this vaccine in any population.” Experts have stated that more strokes have been reported than have been reported, but this is an answer to some countries doing so. Expected. To date, most cases have been reported in young women, who are more likely to develop such rare clots anyway, which can make it more difficult to understand the cause of the clot.

“The problem is that these blood clots are very rare and we really don’t know what their background rate is, so it’s very difficult to know if the vaccine contributes to this. “That’s what former chair Dr. Peter English said. British Medical Association Public Health Medical Committee.

A full investigation can take months, but given the urgency of a continuing pandemic, regulators are likely to make swift decisions, the English says.

“It is very likely that certain groups will stop using the vaccine while conducting further research to get a clearer answer,” the English said.

In March, the use of AstraZeneca was stopped, primarily in more than 12 European countries, due to blood clot problems. Most have resumed — some have age restrictions — after the EMA has said that countries should continue to use potentially life-saving vaccines.

The suspension was considered particularly damaging as it occurred after repeated failures of AstraZeneca’s method of reporting data on vaccine efficacy and how well its injections worked in the elderly. It was. As a result, advice on who can be vaccinated is frequently changed in some countries, raising concerns that AstraZeneca’s credibility will be permanently compromised, vaccine hesitation will increase, and pandemics may be prolonged. I am.

According to English, going back and forth between AstraZeneca vaccines around the world can have serious consequences.

“If you’re going to end the pandemic, you can’t help but use this vaccine,” he said.

This is because vaccines are cheaper and easier to store than many other vaccines. This is important for European immunization campaigns and is a pillar of the UN-sponsored program known as COVAX. vaccine To some of the poorest countries in the world. It is approved for use in more than 50 countries, including the EU and WHO in 27 countries. US authorities are still evaluating the vaccine.

Italy’s governor of northern Veneto said the decision to change guidance on AstraZeneca caused a great deal of confusion in vaccination when Europe was already struggling to step up immunization, and more confusion about shots Said that it could cause.

“It would be ridiculous if they liked Germany and allowed AstraZeneca only to people over the age of 65, Luka Zia told reporters Wednesday.

The recent outage of AstraZeneca occurred in the Castile and Leon region of Spain. There, on Wednesday, Health Director Veronica Cassard temporarily withheld vaccines that he still supported as effective and necessary due to the “principle of prudence.”

“If you have individuals in a certain age group who may actually be at high risk (of coagulation), you need to adjust their use,” Cassadó told Spanish public radio. “We are not questioning AstraZeneca. We need all possible vaccines to reach our goal of 70% of the adult population.”

French health officials have also awaited EMA’s conclusions, saying they will follow EMA recommendations, especially for the 500,000 people who received the first dose of AstraZeneca.

English, the former chairman of the UK drug regulator, has even seen rare and serious side effects with established vaccines, and policymakers have taken polio vaccines as an example and have larger public health goals to use them. He said he often decides to justify. For every one million doses of oral polio vaccine, the live virus in the vaccine paralyzes about one child.

On Tuesday, AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, which developed the vaccine, suspended research on child shots while UK regulators were assessing the association between adult shots and rare blood clots.

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Associated Press author Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, ​​Spain, Colleen Barry in Milan, and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

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