Spain joins the governments of the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy in the decision to temporarily suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to immunize the population against the coronavirus. They thus join nine other countries of the European Union (EU) that have taken the same measure in recent days due to the risk of clots and that had been inoculated with the biological.
The Spanish Ministry of Health has decided, after meeting this afternoon with the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS), to halt vaccination with the Oxford and AstraZeneca drug, pending the European Medicines Agency (EMA) conclude your report on the thrombi suffered by some thirty people who have been given this serum. The administration break will be for at least two weeks.
The minister of the branch, Carolina Darias, has indicated that infrequent thrombosis data has jumped that deviates “from the pattern hitherto known” in recent days. These cases “are very few but very significant,” she added.
María Jesús Lamas, director of the Spanish Medicines Agency (AEM), has reported at a press conference that in Spain there has been a case of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis of which there has been evidence this weekend, although the patient he is recovering. Three other similar cases were detected in Norway and four more in Germany during this weekend.
The director of the AEM has indicated that the symptoms of these thrombosis manifest between 3 and 14 days after receiving the vaccine. Its main symptom is a very intense and disabling headache, accompanied by vomiting, neurological disorders or irregular bleeding.
Lamas also recalled that in the United Kingdom ten million people have been vaccinated with this drug, but there have only been three cases. In Spain, 939,534 AstraZeneca vaccines have been administered and only the aforementioned case of this unusual form of thrombosis has been detected, added Darias.
This Monday, the statement from the Dutch Ministry of Health was first known, in which it states that “based on the new information, the Dutch Medicines Authority has recommended suspending the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a precaution.”
Later it was the German Ministry of Health that made the same decision out of “precaution”, according to the statement collected by the Associated Press agency. Berlin has also indicated that this is a recommendation from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, the country’s vaccine supervisory body, which has called for an investigation of thrombosis cases. The information collected in this analysis will be sent to the EMA, which will decide if “it will affect and in what way”, according to the German Executive.
Likewise, the Government of France has made the same decision as Amsterdam and Berlin: it has stopped administering the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. This was announced at a press conference by the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, who has indicated that the stoppage will last until Thursday afternoon, pending the opinion of the EMA.
The Executive of Italy has also joined this paralysis. The Italian medicines authority (AIFA) has assured that the measure is “precautionary and temporary”, also pending further indications from the EMA, according to Reuters.
Likewise this Monday afternoon it was Luxembourg who reported the “temporary suspension” of vaccination, “both the initial and follow-up vaccines”, as indicated by the country’s Ministry of Health.
In the Netherlands, the stoppage will be in effect until March 18, while an investigation of the possible side effects of the vaccine is awaited, and will affect almost 43,000 people who were waiting for the administration of this immunizer in the next two weeks, according to AD newspaper.
“It is advisable to press the pause button now as a precautionary measure”
“There should be no question about vaccines. I think it is very important that reports (of side effects) are properly investigated. We should always err on the side of caution, so it is wise to hit the pause button now as a precaution. I am confident completely on our experts for this,” Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said.
The Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Luxembourg have thus joined with AstraZeneca.
So far, in addition to these six countries, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, and Thailand had stopped inoculation with this vaccine as a precaution.
Despite the fact that on Friday the World Health Organization (WHO) assured that “there is no reason not to use” the AstraZeneca vaccine against covid-19, a group of experts from the entity will meet this Tuesday to analyze “more thoroughly” the safety of the drug.
“We are evaluating all the cases of thrombi and other possible side effects. Tomorrow we are going to meet and we are going to evaluate the available data that we have since last week to carry out a more in-depth investigation”, Mariângela Simão explained at a press conference , WHO Assistant Director General for Access to Medicines and Health Products. Despite everything, they point out that the investigation does not imply that they believe that the injection of the vaccine and the thrombi are related events.
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