AstraZeneca withdrawing Covid vaccine worldwide,months after admitting rare side effect

Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is currently being pulled from global distribution, several months after the pharmaceutical behemoth acknowledged for the first time in legal documents its potential to induce a rare and hazardous side effect.

Following the voluntary withdrawal of its marketing authorisation by the company, the vaccine is now inapplicable within the European Union. The application for the vaccine’s withdrawal was submitted on the 5th of March and it took effect on Tuesday.

In the forthcoming months, similar proposals for withdrawal will be designated for the approval in the United Kingdom and in the distinct nations that gave the nod to the vaccine, which goes by the moniker, Vaxzevria.

This verdict of withdrawal marks the culmination of this vaccine’s utilisation, which was hailed as a ‘victory of British science’ by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and acclaimed for saving an impressive more than six million lives.

The Vaxzevria vaccine has been in the eye of the storm in recent times due to observed side effect, inducing blood clots and low counts of blood platelets. AstraZeneca conceded in its judicial documents, shared with the High Court during the month of February that very rarely, this vaccine ‘can cause TTS’.

TTS, the acronym for Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, has been associated with a minimum of 81 fatalities in the UK along with numerous severe injuries. More than 50 supposed victims and mourning family members have filed lawsuits against AstraZeneca in a High Court case.

Jamaica was among many countries which had received hundreds of thousands of the vaccine. One shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccines was a gift from the Government and people of Canada.