Society

AstraZeneca is withdrawing its corona vaccine Vaxzevria worldwide. 

Swedish-British pharma giant AstraZeneca's vector vaccine against Covid-19 was 70 per cent effective on average. Only competitors Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna communicated that their mRNA vaccines had an effectiveness of up to 90 per cent. Consequently, from the start, AstraZeneca was struggling with an image problem and solid competitive pressure. 

Thrombosis?

And so now, almost three and a half years after its launch, AstraZeneca reports that it is withdrawing its vaccine worldwide. 

"Since multiple, varied Covid-19 vaccines have been developed, there has been a surplus of available updated vaccines," an announcement reads. As a result, demand for the Swedish-British pharmaceutical giant's vaccine had fallen. This is not exceptional by the way and actually a general trend as there are no more large-scale vaccination campaigns.

"Only high-risk groups are still being targeted for vaccination. If you can then only offer a vaccine with lower efficacy than the competition, it becomes difficult. Moreover, the AstraZeneca vaccine has an extremely rare but very serious side effect. All in all, this makes the balance somewhat unfavourable," Professor Isabel Leroux-Roels, head of department at the Centre for Vaccinology at Ghent University Hospital, analysed the withdrawal for Het Nieuwsblad.

'6.5 million lives saved'

The extremely rare side effect the Belgian professor is talking about is the thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS) that Vaxzevria causes in very exceptional cases (ranging from one in 40,000 to one in 250,000, depending on the age group).

AstraZeneca's corona vaccine claims to have saved over 6.5 million lives worldwide according to independent estimates, the company itself reports.

(FVDV for Tagtik/Source: Het Nieuwsblad/Illustration picture: Pixabay)