LONDON (AP) – Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has asked for the European approval of its coronavirus vaccine to be withdrawn, the EU medicines regulator said.
In an update on the European Medicines Agency's website on Wednesday, the regulator said its approval for AstraZeneca's Vaxzebria had been withdrawn “at the request of the marketing authorization holder.”
AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine was first approved by the EMA in January 2021. But concerns about the vaccine's safety grew within weeks, as dozens of countries suspended its use after unusual but rare blood clots were detected in a small number of patients. People who have been vaccinated. EU regulators concluded the AstraZeneca shot did not increase the overall risk of blood clots, but questions remained.
Some results from the first large-scale trial Britain used to authorize the vaccine were clouded by a manufacturing error that researchers did not immediately acknowledge. Because there was insufficient data on how well the vaccine protected older people, some countries initially limited its use to younger people before reversing their policies.
Billions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been distributed to poor countries through a United Nations-coordinated program because it was cheap and easy to manufacture and distribute. But subsequent research suggests that the more expensive messenger RNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna offer better protection against COVID-19 and its many variants. Most countries have switched to those vaccines.
Britain's national coronavirus vaccination program for 2021 relies heavily on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed primarily by scientists at the University of Oxford with significant government funding. But even Britain has since relied on purchasing mRNA vaccines for its coronavirus booster vaccination program, and the AstraZeneca vaccine is currently in little use globally.
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Associated Press
