AstraZeneca is pulling its Covid-19 vaccine, Vaxzevria, which had been OKed in several nations in Europe and elsewhere.
The U.K. company’s official reason for withdrawing the vaccine was a lack of demand, as the pandemic has largely cooled since it first flared up in China after the first cases were detected in late 2019. The vaccine was granted full marketing authorization in the European Union in 2022.
But just before the vaccine’s run was to end, AstraZeneca publicly admitted in court documents that its COVID-19 vaccine, Vaxzevria, can cause a rare but deadly side effect, called Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, or TTS, according to press reports.
TTS is a condition in which blood clots form, leading to a low number of platelets in the blood. Based on data from the U.K. compiled by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the odds of being affected by TTS as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine is roughly one in 50,000. The legal case against AstraZeneca was first filed by Jamie Scott, a man who suffered from a blood clot that developed on his brain after receiving the vaccine, according to a report in The Telegraph. Since then, dozens have joined the class action lawsuit, according to the newspaper.
While the U.S. initially secured doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, it was put on hold. The mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were favored in the U.S.
The side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine are specific to that type of vaccine, and not to mRNA vaccines used by Pfizer and Moderna.
In a 2023 study published in The Lancet Infectious Disease by Dr. Oliver Watson at the Imperial College London, an estimated 19.8 million deaths have been prevented as a result of widespread vaccination in general. Public health officials around the world recommend that all people who have the ability to get vaccinated, to be vaccinated. This leads to a high enough proportion of the population being protected against COVID-19, such that the disease cannot spread to those most susceptible to it – a concept known as herd immunity. Therefore, by getting vaccinated against COVID-19, people are able to not only protect themselves but also others who may be unable to get the vaccine due to health conditions.
Currently two new COVID-19 variants are beginning to spread in the United States, part of a new family of variants nicknamed “FLiRT”. According to recent data from CDC, one of the subvariants of the FLiRT family, KP.2, is now the dominant strain in the United States and currently accounts for nearly 25% of all COVID-19 infections worldwide. The variant was originally discovered through analysis of wastewater as part of the National Wastewater Surveillance System. Currently, this variant has already overtaken the Omnicron variant in the United States, according to recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.