The reasons why the EU withdrew the AstraZeneca vaccine

The European Union (EU) has not banned the covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca because it is harmful to health, as various publications on social networks claim after the European Commission withdrew the authorization of this drug at the request of the pharmaceutical company itself, which alleged commercial reasons.

Publications on social networks (Instagram, Facebook and

FACTS: The European Commission withdrew the authorization of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca after the pharmaceutical company requested it in March for “commercial reasons” and not because it has admitted that it can cause thrombosis, a very rare side effect that has been indicated in the drug’s package insert since 2021.

The European Commission notified on March 27 that, at the request of AstraZenecawithdraws the marketing authorization of the drug as of May 7.

In that communication, the Community Executive made no reference to the fact that the decision was related to the possible side effects of the injection, the third to receive approval from European regulators, after those made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

For its part, the British pharmaceutical company, which requested the withdrawal on March 5, justified this decision due to the lack of demand and the surplus of Covid-19 vaccines that exists on the market.

“As multiple updated vaccines have been developed for Covid-19 variants, there is now a surplus of vaccines available. This has led to a decrease in demand for Vaxzervria, which is no longer manufactured or supplied”, he points out in the note.

Days before the vaccine was stopped being marketed in the European market, the British newspaper The Telegraph published that AstraZeneca had admitted “for the first time”, in a communication to the High Court of the United Kingdom, that its vaccine can cause thrombosis in “very rare cases.”

The temporal proximity of both pieces of information has led to the circulation of messages stating that the withdrawal responds to this possible side effect, despite the fact that it has already been specified in the vaccine’s package insert since 2021.

In April of that year, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) found a possible link between AstraZeneca inoculations and cases “unusual” of “blood clots with low platelets” after an analysis of 62 cases.

Since then, the package insert for this injection includes as “very strange effect” (1 in every 10,000 cases) the formation of “blood clots often in unusual places”, while the EMA determined that ““The overall benefits of the vaccine in preventing Covid-19 outweigh the risks of side effects.”

In any case, its withdrawal is mainly due to the fact that the vaccine “It was neither in demand nor in use.“, as Verifica Jaime Pérez, member of the board of directors of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology (AEV), explains to EFE.

For his part, Raúl Ortiz de Lejarazu, microbiologist and director emeritus of the National Influenza Center, points out that the risk of thrombosis is something that existed “with all vaccines based on Adenovirus vectors against covid”, like the one produced by Jansen.

However, upon learning of this possibility “many countries, Spain among them, suspended their administration”, hence the low demand for this injection, he points out.

In short, it is not true that the EU has suspended the sale of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine for causing thrombosis, a possible side effect that has been known since 2021 and has no relation to the withdrawal of this drug.