AstraZeneca Roll out paused in France, Germany, Italy and Spain
Due to a small number of blood clot concerns connected to the use of the Oxford AstraZeneca Novel Coronavirus vaccine, Germany, France, Italy and Spain have temporarily halted inoculations and this happened in other European countries as well.
They went against the advice that was given by the international medical agencies and according to reports a third wave of infections could be looming over the continent now.
Spain’s Health Minister Carolina Darias announced in a nationally televised news conference recently, that the vaccination of the people will stop for 2 weeks. It is just a precautionary and temporary suspension until the risks are checked by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). They were confident about the safety of the vaccine before but the few cases of blood clotting in Norway and Denmark caused them to rethink their decisions.
France and Italy are currently waiting on a report from the EU’s Medicine regulator. The French President Emmanuel Macron reported, at a news conference on Monday.
The suspensions came just hours after prosecutors in northern Italy ordered the seizure of a batch of the vaccine after it was reported that a man fell ill before he died after he was vaccinated. Italy’s medicines agency began having suspensions of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine as well.
Many other places in Europe have halted the shot for now, following the death of a woman in Denmark that is not yet been linked to a vaccine. Another fatality was reported in Norway on Monday also.
The World Health Organization, advised that there should be no halt and the pharmaceutical giant and the EMA, have all said there is no evidence that there is a link with blood clotting and that the rollouts should not stop while investigations are conducted in the reports.
The UK’s death toll is the highest in Europe at over 125,000 deaths.
A lockdown and a fast vaccination drive were combined to reduce the cases in the UK causing the number of cases in hospitals to go down dramatically.
