LONDON (AP) – Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has asked for the European approval of its coronavirus vaccine to be withdrawn, the EU medicines regulator said.
in update On Wednesday, the regulator announced on the European Medicines Agency’s website that approval for AstraZeneca’s Vaxzebria had been withdrawn “at the request of the marketing authorization holder.”
AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine was the first to be approved by the EMA. January 2021. But within weeks, dozens of countries suspended use of the vaccine after concerns about its safety grew and unusual but rare blood clots were detected in a small number of vaccinated people. EU regulators concluded that the AstraZeneca shot did not increase the overall risk of blood clots, but I was left with doubts.
Some results from the first large-scale trial Britain used to authorize the vaccine were clouded by a manufacturing error that researchers did not immediately acknowledge. Because there was insufficient data on how well the vaccine protected older people, some countries initially limited its use to younger people before reversing their policies.
Billions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are available. a program coordinated by the United Nations, Because it was cheaper and easier to produce and distribute. But subsequent research suggests that the more expensive messenger RNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna offer better protection against COVID-19 and its many variants. Most countries have switched to those vaccines.
Britain’s national coronavirus vaccination program for 2021 relies heavily on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed primarily by scientists at the University of Oxford with significant government funding. But even Britain has since relied on purchasing mRNA vaccines for its coronavirus booster vaccination program, and the AstraZeneca vaccine is currently in little use globally.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Education Media Group. AP is solely responsible for all content.
