The main reason according to the company would be the decline in demand but AstraZeneca admitted at the end of April that its anti-Covid vaccine can cause thrombosis as a rare side effect. The pharmaceutical giant was one of the first to launch a Covid vaccine on the market, at the end of 2020
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The British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has requested the withdrawal of European authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine, the European Union’s medicines regulator said.
In an update published on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) website on Wednesday, the regulator said approval for AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria had been withdrawn “at the request of the marketing authorization holder”. The main reasons according to the company are linked to the collapse in demand and the “surplus of updated vaccines available”
AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine was approved by the EMA in January 2021.
Doubts about side effects
Within a few weeks, however, they are Concerns about the safety of the vaccine have grownwhen dozens of countries suspended its use after unusual but rare blood clots were detected in a small number of immunized people.
The EU regulator concluded that AstraZeneca’s vaccine did not increase the overall risk of clots, but doubts remained.
AstraZeneca at the end of April admitted for the first time, in some court documents during legal proceedings in London, that its Covid vaccine can cause thrombosis as a rare side effect. The admission could pave the way for multimillion-dollar settlements.
Production error
The partial results of the first major study, used by Great Britain to authorize the vaccine, were clouded by a production error which the researchers did not immediately recognize.
Insufficient data on the vaccine’s effectiveness in protecting older people led some countries to initially limit its use to younger populations, before reversing course.
Billions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been distributed to the poorest countries through a program coordinated by the United Nations, as it was cheaper and easier to produce and distribute.
But subsequent studies suggested that the more expensive mRNA-based vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna provided better protection against Covid-19 and its many variants, and most countries have switched to these vaccines.
