AstraZeneca withdraws anti-Covid vaccines: “Commercial reasons”

In 2020, according to Istat data, there were 78,673 deaths from Covid in Italy. After the first patient in Codogno and the Army trucks that were supposed to transport the corpses, our country and the world waited, desperately, for the development of vaccines. Here, as painful as it is, we need to go back to those months of suffering, to rationally understand why the relationship between risks and benefits of a drug can change: there is a difference between the days of a pandemic that brings hospitals to their knees and those in which finally the virus has mutated and mass immunization is a valid defense. To use a metaphor: when a building is on fire you climb out the window on the ground floor, even if you know you could get hurt; if the fire isn’t there, avoid doing it. Yesterday’s news must be weighed against this background: AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant, has decided to withdraw the anti-Covid vaccine (trade name Vaxzevria) with a viral vector based on an adenovirus, developed together with the Jenner Institute in Oxford and with the contribution of an Italian excellence, the Irbm of Pomezia. It was authorized on 30 December 2020 in the United Kingdom and on 29 January 2021 in the European Union. In the competition with vaccines that use innovative mRNA technology (Pfizer-BionTHech and Moderna), the latter have prevailed, because they are more effective and quicker in adapting to virus mutations. AstraZeneca explains in the official note: «Considering the quantity of available and effective vaccines for the new variants of Covid-19, there was no longer any demand for the Vaxzevria vaccine which consequently was no longer produced or distributed. AstraZeneca has therefore decided to withdraw the marketing authorisation.” The timing, however, did not help to clarify: about ten days ago, in a judicial proceeding in the United Kingdom initiated by the families of those who suffered side effects from the Vaxzevria vaccine, AstraZeneca had put in black and white what was widely known and was not never been hidden by the regulatory authorities: «We admit that the AstraZeneca vaccine can cause Tts in very rare cases. The causal mechanism is unknown.” What is it about? Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia, «involves unusual and serious blood clotting events associated with a low platelet count», explains the World Health Organization, which also concluded in the first phase of the use of AstraZeneca: «Data from the Kingdom United suggest that the risk is 4 cases per million adults (1 case in 250,000), while the rate is estimated at approximately 1 in 100,000 in the European Union.” The data from the Higher Institute of Health is similar, which speaks of 3 cases per million vaccinations. The possible, but very rare, side effect, sometimes even fatal, was well known, so much so that for a period, in 2021 there was a suspension of the use of AstraZeneca, then the recommendation only to over 60s, while, as for any other drug, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia is included among the possible adverse reactions.

OUTCOME
A data released in parliament by the Ministry of Health reported 18 fatal events out of 32 million doses. Already in those weeks, Marco Cavaleri – 6 April 2021 – head of vaccines at the EMA (European agency) had confirmed the causal link between the rare cases of TTS and vaccination with AstraZeneca, recalling however that “the risks are lower than the benefits”. Since the end of 2021 AstraZeneca has no longer been used in Italy, because the scenario has changed and therefore the risk-benefit ratio has changed.

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