© Reuters
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Almost all EU countries have frozen work on the Astra Zeneca vaccine, after the four major countries in the union, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, joined today. In the evening, Portugal and Cyprus also joined, wanting to hear the conclusions of the European Medicines Agency on the last few incidents and deaths with vaccinated people in Europe.
Germany will stop administering the Astra Zeneca vaccine following a recommendation from the Paul Ehrlich National Vaccination Institute. It is the first major European country to join the wave of freezing vaccination with the British-Swedish company’s product.
Less than an hour later, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the same. France will wait for the assessment of the European Medicines Agency, which he said should be announced tomorrow afternoon. This is a precautionary measure in the hope that we will quickly resume vaccination following the EMA announcement, he added. “In that sense, we will stop vaccinating until tomorrow afternoon.”
Minutes earlier, the Italian drug regulator AIFA announced a freeze on vaccination with doses of AstraZeneca. The measure is precautionary and temporary until the EMA’s decision, Reuters clarified.
The news from Berlin was announced by a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, quoted by Reuters. The reason is several reports of vaccinated people who became ill or felt unwell afterwards. Minister Jens Spahn is currently making an extraordinary statement, from which more details are expected.
From Denmark to Norway and from Bulgaria to Iceland, health authorities froze vaccination with the AstraZeneca vector product until the link with cases of clogged blood vessels in patients, some of whom died, was clarified.
The preliminary conclusion of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the manufacturer itself and the World Health Organization is that there is no cause for concern. Lothar Wheeler, director of the German Institute for Infectious Diseases, Robert Koch, said the same last week.
The company also has a problem in Italy, where a vaccination break was announced last week with a specific batch (different from the one in Austria), in which two men died in Sicily. Until the circumstances are established, Romania, which did not receive from the “Austrian” batch, but vaccinated from the “Italian” batch, also stopped using it.
Today, the prosecutor’s office in the Piedmont region blocked a new batch with the number ABV5811, after a 57-year-old music teacher fell ill and died a few hours after vaccination on Saturday. The batch is of a total of 393,600 doses.
Details coming later at www.dnevnik.bg.
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