The AstraZeneca vaccine has been in the spotlight for days due to possible side effects and pathologies caused by its injection. Some countries, finally joined by Spain, stopped the vaccination process until it was certified that this vaccine was completely safe for those who received it.
Thus, some of the people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine have suffered more pain than is common with vaccines, such as fatigue and headache. This vaccine, however, has caused cases of thrombosis in some people and has set off the alarms in many places in Europe.
The European Medicines Agency assures that the vaccine is "safe and effective"
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) assured that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is "safe and effective" and defended that it can continue to be used to combat COVID-19 after investigating cases of thrombosis.
EMA executive director, Emer Cooke, said on Thursday that scientists do not consider vaccination to be "associated with the overall risk of suffering" from these blood clotting problems. In other words, the scientific evidence does not indicate that it is a side effect. "We still can't definitively rule it out," Cooke admitted. The EMA will do further investigation of the thrombosis cases to totally exclude this possibility.
Many European Union states such as Spain, France, Germany or Italy were waiting for this opinion from the regulator to decide whether to reactivate the vaccination with AstraZeneca, which they paralyzed earlier this week despite the fact that the EMA saw no reason to do so.
The stoppage was triggered by about thirty cases of thrombosis among the almost 5 million vaccinated in Europe. Denmark and Austria were the first to suspend the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine late last week, but when Germany joined in on Monday the domino effect accelerated, and more than 15 other EU states, including Spain, followed.
The EMA began investigating the events last week without seeing any indication that the cases were linked to the vaccine. In response to the alarm in European capitals, the EU regulator expanded the investigation by asking all countries to report similar cases.
[This is a translation of the original article "Europa cataloga al fin la vacuna de AstraZenecaa" published in espanadiario.net]