Astrazeneca

Updated Thursday, May 2, 2024 – 14:18

AstraZeneca has admitted for the first time, in official documents, that its Covid-19 vaccine can cause rare adverse effects such as thrombosis. This is what the newspaper has advanced The Telegraphwhich also mentions that the company faces a class action lawsuit for which you could pay compensation of up to 100 million poundssince there are several cases of deaths and serious injuries.

The British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant is being investigated over claims that its vaccine Vaxzevriadeveloped with the University of Oxford, caused death and serious injuries in dozens of cases. The lawyers argue that the vaccine produced a side effect that has had devastating effects on a small number of families, as reported by the British newspaper.

51 cases have been brought to the High Court, with victims and their grieving relatives seeking damages worth an estimated up to £100 million.

In this medium, the first case that was presented last year by Jamie Scott, father of two children, who was left with a lesin cerebral permanente after developing a blood clot and hemorrhage on the brain that prevented him from working after receiving the vaccine in April 2021. The hospital called his wife up to three times to tell her that her husband was going to die.

AstraZeneca disputes such claims, but accepted, in a legal document filed with the High Court in February, that its Covid vaccine, “may, in very rare cases, cause TTS [sndrome de trombosis con trombocitopenia, que provoca que las personas tengan cogulos de sangre y un recuento bajo de plaquetas en sangre]”.

The Spanish subsidiary does not evaluate these types of judicial processes, which have not only been seen in the United Kingdom, but also in Germany. “Patient safety is our primary concern, and regulatory bodies establish clear and rigorous regulations to ensure the safe use of all drugs, including vaccines. Global drug regulators have confirmed that the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks associated with extremely rare side effects.” These are the words they convey through an official statement.

And they add that “according to independent calculations, the vaccines helped save more than 6.5 million lives in their first year of use and more than three billion doses were distributed worldwide.”

It should be remembered that in most European countries the use of Vaxzevria was limited to those aged 60-65 years. In the United Kingdom, the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine was also limited to those over 40 years of age as of May 2021. The problem of thrombosis also led to the halt of trials in children.

Scientists first identified a link between the vaccine and a new disease called vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (VITT) as early as March 2021, shortly after the Covid-19 vaccine rollout began.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that VITT is a subset of TTS, although AstraZeneca does not appear to recognize the term. The Government has indemnified AstraZeneca against any legal action but has so far refused to intervene, as reported by The Telegraph.