The company AstraZeneca stops marketing its vaccine against covid-19, Vaxzevria as of this Tuesday in the European Union at its own request, according to the British-Swedish company in a statement. The European Commission (EC) notified on March 27 that, at the request of the owner – AstraZeneca –, it is withdrawing the marketing authorization of the drug.
AstraZeneca justifies the withdrawal due to the lack of demand and the surplus of vaccines currently available on the market. “As multiple updated vaccines have been developed for Covid-19 variants, there is now a surplus of vaccines available. This has caused a decrease in demand for Vaxzervria, which is no longer manufactured or supplied,” the note states.
A spokesperson for the EC confirmed to EFE that, at the company's request, the European authorization to market AstraZeneca's covid-19 vaccine will be withdrawn and pointed out that this fact is not uncommon when the products are not in demand in the EU.
The laboratory, which made the withdrawal request on March 5 before Brussels, congratulates itself on the role played by Vaxzevria in ending the pandemic. Along these lines, he points out that, "according to independent estimates, in the first year of use alone, more than 6.5 million lives were saved and more than 3 billion doses were supplied worldwide."
Vaxzevria, the AstraZeneca vaccine against covid-19, was the third to arrive in Spain, on February 6, 2021, once authorized by the European Commission on January 29 of that year after the review to which all Vaccines are submitted by the European Medicines Agency. It was the third vaccine to receive approval from European regulators, after those made by Pfizer/BioTech and Moderna.
AstraZeneca admitted for the first time that its Covid 19 vaccine can cause side effects such as thrombosis in “very rare cases”, in a legal document presented to the High Court of the United Kingdom in February, according to The Telegraph newspaper last week.
This statement by the pharmaceutical company occurs within the framework of a judicial process by the English Supreme Court, which has an open class action lawsuit in which 51 cases of victims and relatives claim up to 100 million pounds from AstraZeneca for damages and prejudices for the side effects of the vaccine. One of the effects is thrombosis syndrome with thrombocytopenia, which is a clot in the blood vessels of the brain, legs or elsewhere in the body.
AstraZeneca rejects the claims contained in the complaints but accepts, however, that its doses “may, in very rare cases, cause thrombosis.” Specifically, the complainants' lawyers argue that the vaccine, developed together with the University of Oxford, "has had a devastating effect on a small number of families."
One of the first cases to be prosecuted was that of Jaime Scott, who has been left with a permanent brain injury after suffering a clot and hemorrhage in the brain that prevented him from working after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine in April 2021. In May 2021, 2023, AstraZeneca, also through a judicial response, responded that it did not accept the thesis that Scott's case had been caused by its vaccine.
