Panic over Astrakhan vaccines, France opens to Israelis

The health authorities in Denmark, Norway and Iceland announced today (Thursday) the temporary suspension of the use of Astra-Zenka corona vaccines, as a precautionary measure following reports of isolated cases of blood clots forming among those who received the injection. The announcement by the Nordic countries joins similar decisions made in several other European countries, although health experts around the world, along with the European Medicines Agency, have made it clear that there is no evidence that the British-Swedish society’s vaccine is dangerous in any way.

A move by Denmark, Norway and Iceland was preceded by a similar decision by Austria, which this week stopped using a particular stockpile of Astraenic vaccines until an investigation is underway into a death from blood clots and another in which one of those vaccinated suffered from pulmonary embolism. The stockpile, which contains a million vaccines, has been sent to a total of 17 countries across the EU, and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Luxembourg have also announced that they will not use it until the investigation is completed.

Authorities in Denmark today announced that they have decided to suspend the administration of Astra-Zenica vaccines for two weeks following the death of a 60-year-old woman who also developed a blood clot after receiving the injection. Authorities noted that the vaccine given to her came from the same stockpile that Austria used.

The Danish Minister of Health emphasized that the authorities did not have any information linking these blood clots to the vaccine itself, and that the decision to suspend the vaccination was made as a precautionary measure only. “It is not possible at the moment to determine if there is a connection. We are acting early, it needs to be checked,” the minister tweeted on Twitter.

In Norway, they did not specify for how long the administration of Astra-Zenka vaccines will be suspended. “We are waiting for information that will show us if there is a link between the vaccines and this case of a blood clot,” said Geir Bockholm, head of infectious diseases at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

In Italy, too, authorities today ordered a halt to the use of another stockpile of vaccines, also of Astra-Zenica. A source close to the details told Reuters that the decision was also made in this case as a purely preventive measure, following the deaths of two men from Sicily who received the vaccine. Italian authorities have made it clear that there is no evidence linking the vaccine itself to these deaths.

Although the authorities in all the countries that have suspended the use of vaccines have stressed that they have no information indicating their possible danger, these decisions have caused a panic in Europe and have resonated widely in the rest of the world. As a result, a number of organizations, including Astra-Zenica itself, have been forced to issue announcements stressing the safety of the vaccine.

In AstraZenica’s announcement, she mentioned the extensive clinical trials that preceded the approval of the vaccine, trials whose results determined not only its safety but its efficacy, and were peer-reviewed. Earlier this week, the company issued a statement following Austria’s decision, stating that there was no connection between the case there and the vaccination and that during its production there were very strict controls, but added that it was cooperating with the Vienna investigation.

Asterisk backup was provided tonight by the European Medicines Agency, which also said there was no evidence linking the various reported cases to the vaccine. According to the European regulator, the number of cases in which vaccinated people had blood clots was not higher than what can be seen in the general population. By March 9, it was noted, a total of 22 cases of blood clots had been reported among vaccinated, out of a total of three million who had received the vaccine.

The European Medicines Agency issued another statement this evening stressing that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh its alleged risks, and called on countries to continue to use it even as ongoing investigations continue.

In the UK, too, health authorities have urged residents not to be alarmed by reports and to continue to be vaccinated with Astra-Zenica doses. The British Medicines and Health Products Agency has said that at least with regard to the death in Denmark, there is no evidence linking the blood clot that caused the woman’s death to the vaccine she received. “Blood clots can form naturally and are not uncommon,” said Phil Raine, a senior British official. He noted that to date, 11 million doses of the Asterica vaccine have been distributed in the UK.

Health experts around the world have also expressed doubts about these precautionary measures taken by some European countries. “This is a super-cautious approach based on some isolated reports in Europe,” said Stephen Evans, a professor at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London. “The problem with spontaneous reports of suspected problematic responses to the vaccine is the immense difficulty in distinguishing between a causal link and a coincidence,” he added, noting that corona disease itself is also linked to cases of blood clot formation.

At the same time as the panic surrounding Astra-Zenka vaccines, the EU today granted the final approval for the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which although reported to be slightly less effective than the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Modern, is promising worldwide due to the fact that it requires only one dose. , And not two. In this way it can facilitate the distribution of vaccines – which in many areas, especially in Europe, are lazy.

The EU, it will be recalled, is not meeting the targets of its vaccination campaign, and its member states are far behind countries such as Britain that withdrew from the EU, the US, Israel and even Chile. Its vaccine supply, in the shadow of supply problems from other companies such as Astra-Zenica and Pfizer, has angered Brussels and what has already been dubbed the “vaccine war”, in which Brussels threatens to block the export of vaccine shipments from Europe to other countries. Last, when it blocked the shipment of hundreds of thousands of packets of Astra-Zenica that was supposed to arrive in Australia.

Along with Brussels’ efforts to expand its supply of vaccines from Western countries, some EU countries, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe, are not waiting and are already using “Eastern” vaccines, those of China and Russia. One of these countries is Hungary, which testified to the great urgency with which it is working to obtain as many vaccine doses as possible today when authorities revealed that they pay $ 37.5 for every single dose of Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.

Although Chinese vaccines are often considered cheaper, the amount Hungary pays for this vaccine is much higher than what the EU pays for Pfizer vaccines, and even Israel, which according to some reports pays $ 30 for each dose of Pfizer.

Today, another shipment of 450,000 vaccines from Sinopharm arrived in Hungary, and according to the Hungarian authorities, they have already received one million doses from China. “By ordering vaccines from the East, we were able to vaccinate half a million more people,” Prime Minister Victor Urban’s chief of staff, Gargali Golias, said today. To date, Hungary has vaccinated 1.149 million people in one dose. It also uses the Russian vaccine “Sputnik V”, and Goliath noted that the amount Hungary pays for every two doses of the Russian vaccine is $ 19.90. This is an amount similar to that reported by other countries.

The reason why Hungary is desperate to get as many vaccines as possible is quite understandable – the morbidity figures have been skyrocketing in recent days. Today, a daily record of new infections was reported – 8,312. Another 172 corona patients died within one day. Last Monday, the government announced new restrictions following the spike in morbidity.

An increase in morbidity is reported in several European countries. According to data from the continent last week, about one million new infections were diagnosed in Europe, an increase of 9% compared to the week before. This interrupted a six-week sequence in which there was a decrease in the total number of infections on the continent. The World Health Organization attributed this leap to the spread of the British strain of the virus, which is considered to be much more contagious, and perhaps even more deadly.

In France, too, the authorities are reporting an increase in the number of people hospitalized, but despite this and despite the fear of the variants, in Paris today they announced relief for passengers from a number of countries – including Israel. The French Foreign Ministry has announced that Israeli passengers, along with passengers from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom and Singapore, will be allowed to enter the country without having to present a special reason for doing so.

The French Minister of Culture, Jean-Baptiste León, said the relief was made possible due to the improvement in morbidity data in these countries. The French Foreign Ministry stressed that all other restrictions, including the requirement to present a negative result of a corona test carried out at least 72 hours before the flight, would still apply to passengers.

Meanwhile, today the Royal Palace in Sweden announced that the heiress, Princess Victoria, had been infected in Corona along with her husband Prince Daniel. The Swedish royal palace said in a statement that the princess and her husband had developed “mild symptoms” of the disease, but both were feeling well overall. Victoria, 43, is the eldest daughter of King Carl Gustav XVI.