Madrid. Spain will stop using AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine for at least two weeks, the government said yesterday, March 15, joining a growing list of European countries curbing the vaccine over concerns about possible side effects.
Earlier yesterday, March 15, France, Germany and Italy joined Denmark, Norway and several others in stopping use of the dose following reports of blood clots in some patients who had received the vaccine.
“We made this decision today for the sake of caution,” Spain’s Health Minister Carolina Dias said at a press conference.
He referred to “rare cases, very few but very significant and that have led Spain to join the rest of the countries that have opted for this precautionary suspension.”
AstraZeneca is only one of three vaccines in use in Europe. But the growing number of nations raising the alarm amounts to another setback for the European Union’s vaccination campaign, which has been plagued by shortages and other obstacles and lags far behind campaigns in Britain and the United States.
The EU drug regulatory agency called a meeting for Thursday to review the experts’ findings on the AstraZeneca vaccine and decide whether to take action.
On the other side of the world, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged citizens to accept the AstraZeneca vaccine, after several countries stopped his administration.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also advised to continue vaccinating with the dose of AstraZeneca, however, its experts will meet today to analyze the safety of the drug.
“We do not want people to panic and for now we recommend that countries continue to vaccinate with AstraZeneca,” said scientist Soumya Swaminathan at a news conference in Geneva.
“So far, we have not found a link between these events and the vaccine,” he added.
The European Union has had strong disputes with AstraZeneca over the erratic distribution. The pharmaceutical company, of British origin, has been the subject of an absurd politicization under the Brexit environment. Boris Johnson justifies the progress of the vaccination campaign in his country under the idea that his departure from the EU has been successful.
Confinement in Italy
Although vaccination campaigns are progressing, the threat from the virus persists.
In Italy, almost 40 million people began yesterday, March 15, a new confinement due to the increase in infections due to the variants of coronavirus, with Rome and Milan deserted and divided between sadness and hope.
The measures include the closure of schools, restaurants and museums in three-quarters of the country, and residents were urged to stay home except to go to work, to the doctor or for reasons of major cause.
In Germany, where the government relaxed some restrictions, the association of emergency unit doctors called for an “immediate” reimposition of “severe” measures to deal with the third wave of the pandemic.
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