The European Union’s drug regulator has said that the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe and effective.
Officials hope that the finding will alleviate concerns about possible rare side effects involving blood clots that have caused more than a dozen countries to halt the vaccine’s use.
They also urged the concerned countries to return the jab into their arsenal against the resurgent coronavirus.
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The regulators affirmed that No causative link has yet emerged between the vaccine and blood clots or severe bleeding. In fact, AstraZeneca reported this week that a review of 17 million people who received the vaccine found they were less likely than others to develop dangerous clots.
The executive director of the European Medicines Agency, Emer Cooke, said members of the bloc now had the necessary information to use the vaccine.
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She said:
“A situation like the one we have seen here is not unexpected.
“When you vaccinate millions of people, it’s inevitable that rare or serious instances or illnesses will occur in the time immediately following vaccination.”
Also the chair of the safety committee for the drug regulator, Sabine Straus, said it had found no evidence of a quality issue or problems related to a specific batch.
“Its benefits continue to be far greater than its risks,” Ms. Straus said.
The European Medicines Agency approved use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in January as a critical part of early rollout plans, but it has gone on to make up less than 20 percent of the hundreds of millions of doses orders by the E.U.
Despite the differences in the vaccines, all those approved by Western regulators have shown themselves to be remarkably effective at reducing severe illness and death.
© ControlTV 2021.
