Nothing to fear: AstraZeneca’s vaccine is safe, says EMA.

Europe’s medicinal regulatory agency has ruled out that cases of thrombus deaths in newly vaccinated people are due to Oxford and Astrazeneca’s product.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is safe. Following the decision by the agency, which is the equivalent of the FDA in Europe, EU countries resumed the vaccination.

The vaccine had raised alarms in some countries after cases of people dying after vaccination. The domino effect was not long in coming, and country after country began to halt the process in the face of such allegations. The EMA agency had to intervene and analyze the case closely to reach a verdict.

Yesterday the verdict was known: the vaccine is safe. Germany, France, and Italy said they will resume the vaccination process today. The EMA says the conclusion is scientifically clear and therefore rules out that the vaccine causes clots, as initially speculated. The incidents of thrombus formation, stroke, and pulmonary embolism were therefore a coincidence in these people and not a product of the vaccine.

Emer Cooke, director of EMA, noted that the investigation found no link of the vaccine to thrombi occurring in the blood. That assumption led 17 countries to suspend its use in recent days. Cooke said that “the protective benefits of the covid vaccine outweigh the risks”.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has been a staunch defender of the product developed by the two UK bodies, said the decision ended concerns about the vaccine. He said in no uncertain terms that both the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines are safe. “What is not safe is getting infected with Covid.” His comments coincided with those of French Prime Minister Jean Castex, who announced that he would be given the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine today.

Despite this, some media outlets continue to publish stories about deaths following the use of the vaccine. However, it must be said that the vaccine has been given to more than 17 million people in Europe and Great Britain to date. Sabine Straus, in charge of reviewing the EMA evidence, noted that the cases of thrombi reported after the vaccine was “much lower than expected in the general population”.

According to the experts, many of these are from people who, with or without the vaccine, could have died. It should be borne in mind that the population being vaccinated at the moment is older and therefore more vulnerable. It is, therefore, to be expected that incidents such as these will occur without necessarily being due to the injection. Many of them are part of the annual statistics of thrombus or stroke cases that usually occur. Therefore, the problem is not so much with the vaccine as with the risk of cardiovascular problems at this age.

With this decision, many European countries that had stopped the vaccination process will be able to continue it without any problems and thus move towards the goal of vaccinating as many people as possible as soon as possible to lower infection rates on the continent.

As a precaution, doctors say anyone with a headache for more than four days after vaccination or swelling beyond the injection site should seek specialized care.

Another piece of good news about vaccines is the result of an Oxford University study that disproves that the Brazilian variant is resistant to vaccines. Previously thought to be immune to the various products now available to prevent severe covid, the work indicates that the variant may be less resistant than initially thought.

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