On Monday, Germany, France, Italy and Spain became the latest countries to halt the administration of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. These countries are following in the footsteps of Denmark, Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands and Thailand, who have also suspended use of the vaccine, which has yet to be authorized for use in the United States. Ostensibly, these suspensions are due to a cluster of cases in which the vaccine may have increased risk of blood clotting. But multiple experts say that the vaccine is safe and that suspensions hinder efforts to rollout vaccines worldwide. Others worry the vaccine is being put on hold for political, rather than scientific, reasons. This is especially a concern given that demand for vaccines currently outstrip supply as Covid-19 cases continue to spike across EuropeSeveral countries have reported a possible increase in blood clotting among patients who received AstraZeneca’s vaccine. There have been 37 such reports among the 17 million people vaccinated across the U. K. and EU, and preliminary reports suggest one person each in Italy, Austria and Denmark died due to blood clots after getting the AstraZeneca vaccine. The European Medicine Agency’s (EMA) safety committee cautions, however, that none of those deaths were actually linked to the vaccine. The committee further noted that several people who got blood clots were middle aged, when such clots are more common, and that blood clots aren’t particularly rare in the general population. AstraZeneca noted in a statement that the number of blood clots are actually “much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size.”Davey Smith, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California San Diego, is baffled by governments’ decisions to suspend use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. “I’ve seen no data to see why they are stopping,” he says, adding, “People are going to get blood clots, because they would have gotten them with or without the vaccine.”Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, also expressed surprise at these governments’ moves. “Pausing to review data is fine,” she says. “But what pausing means is losing ground against protecting people against a deadly pandemic, so there is something lost with that.”Once considered to be the leader in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca has ended up facing more hurdles than its competitors. Problems started last September, when global trials of the vaccine were paused due to a patient experiencing a severe illness. The trial soon resumed, but two months later the company revealed a blunder: in the U. K. trials run by Oxford, participants had accidentally been given half-doses of the vaccine, a mistake that shook the faith of regulators in the U. S., who now expect final clinical trial data from AstraZeneca in April.


All data is taken from the source: http://forbes.com
Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2021/03/15/politics-not-science-may-be-behind-suspensions-of-astrazenecas-covid-vaccine/


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