AstraZeneca withdraws its anti-Covid vaccine from the European market

LONDON (AP) — Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has requested the withdrawal of European authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine, according to the European medicines regulator.

In a update On the European Medicines Agency’s website on Wednesday, the regulator said approval of AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria had been withdrawn “at the request of the marketing authorization holder.”

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine first received EMA approval in January 2021. However, within weeks, concerns grew about the vaccine’s safety, when dozens of countries suspended its use after unusual but rare blood clots were detected in a small number of vaccinated people. The European regulator concluded that the AstraZeneca shot did not increase the overall risk of clots, but doubts remained.

Partial results from its first major trial – which Britain used to authorize the vaccine – were clouded by a manufacturing error that researchers did not immediately acknowledge. Insufficient data on how well the vaccine protects older people led some countries to limit its use to younger populations before reversing course.

Billions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been distributed to the poorest countries via a Program coordinated by the UN, because it was cheaper and easier to produce and distribute. But studies later suggested that more expensive messenger RNA vaccines, made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, offered better protection against COVID-19 and its many variants, and most countries opted for those vaccines.

In 2021, the UK’s national coronavirus vaccination program has relied heavily on AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which was largely developed by scientists at the University of Oxford with significant financial support from the government. But even Britain later resorted to purchasing mRNA vaccines for its COVID vaccination booster programs, and the AstraZeneca vaccine is now rarely used around the world.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Education Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.