AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine has suffered a major blow, after the European Union announced that they will not allow vaccine rollout across Europe. Before the vaccine rollout begun last year around the globe, people were expecting high effectiveness of the vaccine. However, a new report suggest that the vaccine has resulted in serious side effects in younger people and women.
The EU has placed orders with the company until June and will not renew the deal beyond June. Emmanuel Macron, the President of France said that other companies’ vaccine are more effective in comparison to AstraZeneca. As the new variants of Wuhan virus are increasing, the president fears that AstraZeneca is not effective for the new variants. Also, the company failed to come up with reliable plan to make timely deliveries.
European Medicines Agency earlier announced that AstraZeneca’ vaccine resulted in serious side effects. The agency reported that the vaccine caused unusual blood clots, along with low blood platelets in the human body. More than 400 million people across Europe have already taken the AstraZeneca jab. Now, European Union has struck a deal with the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine to buy more than one billion doses.
Denmark, and several European countries have already suspended AstraZeneca completely.
Denmark became the first country in Europe to completely suspend the rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Other European countries also suspend the delivery of the same vaccine. However, some countries continued to provide the vaccination, with limitations to certain age groups. This decision will further delay the vaccine rollout in Europe. WHO has been criticizing the European Union for slow vaccine rollouts.
Meanwhile, Sweden decided to donate all the remaining AstraZeneca vaccines to COVAX, the worldwide initiative co-led by WHO, Gavi, and the Vaccine Alliance. Norway also joined Sweden and Denmark to completely suspend the rollout of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine. AstraZeneca has been troublesome to Europeans ever since the vaccine rollout begun. EU and the company reportedly involved in a public spat.
AstraZeneca had promised to roll out 90 million vaccines in the first three months of 2021. But, the company only delivered 30 million vaccines. Again, in the second quarter, the company failed to deliver 180 million doses, and deliver only 70 million. This led the Italian officials to raid the company’s facility in Rome. Outside the EU, Canada has limited the use of vaccine, and suspended giving the shots to people below 40 years.
