AstraZeneca's suspension leaves 127,000 Catalans without vaccine until further notice

MartorellThe Health Department has suspended in a precautionary and temporary way the administration of AstraZeneca's vaccine following the indications of the Interterritorial Council. The Interterritorial Council, which met this afternoon to analyse the impact of the cases of thrombosis suffered by a group of patients in the European Union after being vaccinated with this drug. However, the head of the Catalan Health Department, Alba Vergés, has insisted on transmitting a message of calm because, she said, the surveillance system has been shown to work properly. The department has already begun to cancel appointments for those scheduled to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine in the coming days but maintained the schedule for the groups who are to receive doses of Pfizer's or Moderna's.

With the temporary decision, the 127,000 AstraZeneca doses that arrived in Catalonia (37,000 of them yesterday) and which were meant to be administered to key workers (police, teachers and health staff) between 18 and 55 will remain in the warehouses. At the moment, only 186,000 people have received the first dose and the second round has not yet begun. Vergés wanted to reassure these patients and, in this sense, the Secretary of Public Health, Josep Maria Argimon, stressed that suspected cases of thrombosis are "very rare" in relation to the 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union, but has considered the decision to quarantine the doses of this brand "reasonable".

Vergés has indicated that the department has begun to cancel scheduled appointments and taken down the platform to request new ones until the European Medicines Agency (EMA) gives an opinion on whether the thrombi could have been caused by the vaccine. In any case, Vergés is confident that this setback will not disrupt the planned schedule and that vaccination will be able to restart as soon as the EMA's report is available, probably before second doses are due.

Last Friday, the Health Department blocked 2,000 doses that belonged to a batch of vaccines that had caused concern around the European Union when they detected adverse side effects in some of the patients receiving the AstraZeneca drug. The Catalan administration had been in favour of approving the use of this vaccine for the over-55s, as countries like Germany and Italy have done, and against the criteria of the Spanish government, which has always said it was waiting an opinion from the European body that ensures the safety and quality of medicines.