Austria SUSPENDS Astra-Zeneca jabs after one death

Written by dailymail.co.uk on March 12, 2021. Posted in Current News

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Austria has suspended vaccinations with a batch of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus jabs as a precaution following the death of one person and the illness of another after the shots. The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) said a 49-year-old woman died as a result of severe coagulation disorders. It also confirmed another 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism and is now recovering.

The agency said it had received two reports ‘in a temporal connection’ with a vaccine from the same batch in the district clinic of Zwettl, Lower Austria.

‘Currently there is no evidence of a causal relationship with the vaccination,’ BASG said. Swiss newspaper Niederoesterreichische Nachrichten as well as broadcaster ORF and the APA news agency reported that the women were both nurses who worked at the Zwettl clinic. BASG said blood clotting was not among the known side effects of the vaccine and confirmed it was pursuing its investigation vigorously to completely rule out any possible link.

‘As a precautionary measure, the remaining stocks of the affected vaccine batch are no longer being issued or vaccinated,’ it added.

It is not clear which factory the batch of vaccines came from or how big the batch was. The vaccine company said it was in contact with Austrian authorities and would fully support the investigation. It noted the vaccine had been approved by the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization based on a global clinical program involving 23,000 participants.

‘All of these evaluations have concluded that the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective,’ the company said.

European Union regulators on Jan. 30 approved the product, saying it was effective and safe to use. Adverse reactions seen in trials were short-lived for the most part and blood clotting issues were not reported. The suspension comes amid the EU’s ongoing row with AstraZeneca following Covid vaccine bungling.

In January, AstraZeneca slashed its first-quarter supplies to the EU from 90 million to 40 million doses. The company later told the EU it was also likely to miss its target for the second quarter by 50 per cent. The fallout prompted Brussels to institute an ‘export transparency mechanism’, which forces vaccine manufacturers to ask for permission from national governments before they can ship supplies outside of the EU.

Despite Eurocrats initially insisting the mechanism would not be used to block vaccine shipments, last Thursday Italy halted the export of 250,000 Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs destined for Australia.

French health minister Olivier Veran suggested on Friday that France ‘could do the same’. The move raised eyebrows Down Under, as Australia’s finance minister Simon Birmingham said it is ‘a reminder of the desperation that exists in other parts of the world, compared with the very good position we found ourselves in here‘.

‘We are obviously disappointed and frustrated by this decision,’ he added.

Australia is relying on vaccine imports to get its jab drive up and running, before domestically-produced doses become available. Matthew Lesh, head of research at Australia’s conservative Adam Smith Institute, also hit out – branding the EU a ‘bully’ and calling the move ‘a very clear demonstration of closed, self-interested and nationalistic behaviour [that] the world should not tolerate.’

Boris Johnson’s spokesman added: ‘We would expect the EU to continue to stand by its commitments.’

According to Australian media, Health Minister Greg Hunt has asked the European Commission to review the Italian decision. Italy’s prime minister has urged the EU to ‘suffocate’ vaccine makers who fail to deliver on their contractual obligations amid a row over supplies from AstraZeneca.

The export control mechanism was hastily pushed through by the EU in January after the bloc bitterly accused AstraZeneca of holding back doses meant for the EU and diverting them to newly-unshackled Brexit Britain.

Italy’s new prime minister Mario Draghi told Ursula von der Leyen over the phone on Wednesday that it was necessary to ‘suffocate’ the pharmaceutical giants to force them to meet their contractual obligations, according to Italian daily La Republicca.

The blockade was branded ‘disgraceful behaviour’ by former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who noted it put the EU’s relationship with the world at risk.

He told The Telegraph: ‘Frankly, it amounts to disgraceful behaviour. It comes at the end of a period where it took them a long time to approve the vaccine, then some of their leaders questioned the value of the vaccine, and it looks likely they wasted the vaccine as a result of that because of an uptake shortfall.’

In the latest turn of events, the EU is now set to ask the US for millions of Covid vaccines as it tries to plug the shortfall in its programme.

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the EU was ‘desperately scrabbling around to grab hold of anything they can get their hands on’.

‘This vaccine debacle exposes what the EU is all about,’ he said last night. ‘It’s an insular, protectionist organisation that actually believes it is the most important place on earth‘.

‘They simply cannot accept that they have screwed up. First of all, they blame the British. Then they accuse Australia. Now they are going cap in hand to America and essentially saying, You’ve got spare vaccines, give them to us.” It’s absolutely pathetic.’

The EU chaos has been made worse by public reluctance to take the AstraZeneca shot after several countries including Germany cast doubt on its efficacy by refusing to recommend it for over-65s.

France and Germany were forced into embarrassing U-turns, having initially questioned its effectiveness for the over-65s. French President Emmanuel Macron had sparked fury when he suggested the vaccine was only ‘quasi-effective’ in older people.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex admitted last week that the jab was ‘very efficient’ and worked as well as other EU-approved vaccines. Germany’s health minister Jens Spahn yesterday urged regulators to act on the real-world findings from the UK which prove that the jab is highly effective in older people.

‘We now have very good data from England and Scotland showing that AstraZeneca works very, very well in over-65s,’ Spahn told ARD television on Wednesday.

Greece and Sweden have also announced they will drop age restrictions, following a similar move by Belgium, with Spain also considering a change to allow elderly patients to receive the AstraZeneca jab. Concerns about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine have also hampered its rollout in Italy, with some refusing to have the jab as they believe the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines offer more protection.

Teachers and police officers under 50 have been bumped up the priority list, providing they accept the AstraZeneca vaccine. Police representatives have demanded they be given jabs by Pfizer or Moderna. The UK has administered 21.7 million first doses and over a million second doses – equivalent to more than a third of the population. By comparison, across all EU states, just 8.4 per cent of citizens have had an inoculation.

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