For the first time since the pandemic broke out, a vaccine against Covid-19 is about to be withdrawn from the market.
This is Vaxzevria, the name by which the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca is known. In these hours, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company has announced that it has started the procedures for the withdrawal of its product from the market worldwide.
Stop the Aic in Europe
Furthermore, last March the company had voluntarily withdrawn the marketing authorization in the European Union. While on 8 May a note from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) issued a warning according to which the vaccine is no longer authorized for use.
AstraZeneca justified this decision – as reported by the British newspaper The Guardian – by reporting a “surplus of updated vaccines available”, which caused a decline in demand for the Vxzevria vaccine, which is now no longer supplied or produced.
The company’s move comes a few days after another significant event. In late April, the group admitted for the first time in court documents during legal proceedings in London that its Covid vaccine may cause thrombosis as a rare side effect.
For their part, company leaders were keen to underline how the efforts made to create the vaccine “have been recognized by governments around the world, and are widely considered to be a fundamental component to putting an end to the global pandemic”.
Side effects: why we need to talk about them
The story of the AstraZeneca vaccine, in our opinion, provides an important assistance to support, once again, how necessary it is to talk about side effects.
In fact, we must not forget that, like any other drug, vaccines can also generate adverse reactions, sometimes even serious ones. It’s nothing new. Indeed, to put it in the language of the writer: it is not news.
At the same time, however, it should not be forgotten that vaccines against Covid-19 have saved the lives of millions of people. Anyone who denies it is either misinformed or likes to wear the role of a “conspiracy theorist”. Terzium non datur. The fact that AstraZeneca has admitted that its vaccine against the virus can cause, in very rare cases, thrombosis thrombocytopenia syndrome (Tts) does not change things.
However, this admission has awakened the spirits of the anti-vaccination people. It was of little use, in fact, that information of this type was already known to professionals (and also to the population), ever since the vaccine was put on the market (and then subsequently stopped in some European countries).
And it is likely that it will be of little use to know that the side effects of anti-covid vaccines are still being studied today. You just need to read the main scientific journals to discover that this is the case.
A lesson for future pandemics
But above all, it is essential to reiterate, we can (and must) talk about side effects, without obscurantism of any kind or omissions. And without the need to resort to commissions of inquiry. What is needed – as he argued Antonio Cassonemember of the American Academy of Microbiology, in the columns of Repubblica a few days ago – is to recognise, we reiterate, “how the anti-Covid vaccines have saved the lives of millions of people, make the most of it for the next pandemics and compensate appropriately all subjects who have suffered from the documented adverse effects of vaccines in the interest of the entire community”.
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