On March 12, 2021, the European countries provisionally stopped the usage of COVID-19 vaccines developed by AstraZeneca after the reports surfaced which included the formation of blood clots in the inoculated people.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca plc has received a backlash from various European countries such as Norway, Iceland, Bulgaria, and Denmark, after the detection of side-effects in the citizens who were inoculated with the pharmacy company’s COVID-19 vaccines.
The Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Boyko Borisov, released a statement quoting, “I order the suspension of inoculations with AstraZeneca’s vaccine until all the doubts are dismissed by the European Medicines Agency.” Moreover, Austria had paused the rollout of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in the country as the regulatory authorities were scrutinizing the reason of an inoculated individual’s death for the unknown reasons. The disquiet revolving around the COVID-19 vaccine of AstraZeneca has reach the Asian Continent as well with Thailand post-ponding the import of pharma-company’s batch of vaccines.
Amidst these allegations against the doses of AstraZeneca, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a public statement in defence of the British pharmacy company, “Until March 9, around 268 million doses of vaccine have been delivered globally since the outbreak of the epidemic and referring to the reported data – no cause of death have been found to be associated to any COVID-19 vaccine to date.” Furthermore, spokesperson of WHO, Dr. Margaret Harris, further added that the blood clotting incidences are common in people and has no clear indication of its relation with vaccine dosage. A spokesperson from the WHO’s global advisory board, SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) revealed that the organization is investigating the reports on AstraZeneca’s vaccines and the company will soon publicly disclose the causing factors of these clots.