BOLZANO. Following reports of adverse events temporally related to the administration of doses of a specific batch of AstraZeneca vaccine, the Italian Medicines Agency has decided to suspend the use of the vaccine with number of lotto ABV2856.
At the same time, the Italian Medicines Agency points out that at the moment no causal link is known between the administration of the vaccine and adverse events.
The doses of AstraZeneca vaccine currently available to the South Tyrolean Health Service do not belong to this lot. Therefore, the South Tyrolean Health Authority is continuing the vaccination as planned.
At the beginning of February, the South Tyrolean Health Authority received and applied instead 2,520 doses of this lot; so far there are no reports of serious adverse effects related to the vaccination of this vaccine in South Tyrol.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also states that there is currently no evidence that cases of bleeding disorders in Denmark and in other countries have been triggered by vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
This statement was necessary after Denmark and other countries temporarily suspended vaccination with the vaccine AstraZeneca following reports.
The Safety Committee of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has already been activated and is reviewing evidence and investigating reported cases from this batch, as well as any other cases of thromboembolic events and other blood clot related incidents reported following vaccination. Information available to date indicates that the number of thromboembolic events is no higher in vaccinated individuals than in the general population. As of March 9, 2021, 22 cases of thromboembolic events have been reported among the 3 million people vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s COVID 19 vaccine in Europe.