More AstraZeneca vaccines are coming and the world is still monitoring their effects

The effects of the Astrazeneca vaccine remain under study / AFP

As Australia yesterday reported the first death of a person who received the AstraZeneca vaccine, the world continues to analyze the consequences that the application of this dose could have and our country, short of vaccines, awaits its arrival tomorrow. as if it were water in the desert. .

As for the Australian case, more specifically, it is a 48-year-old woman who received the vaccine on April 8. This was a few hours before Australian authorities recommended that people under the age of 50 receive the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine instead, due to the low risk of clots associated with AstraZeneca.

Four days later, the woman was admitted with clots to a hospital in Newcastle, NSW, and died on Thursday, according to the statement released yesterday. The woman is the third case of clots in Australia linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine since its national launch in early March.

The Australian case is in line with what has happened in recent days in Denmark, where its health authorities have announced the final elimination of the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford from their vaccination plan, due to the link between the drug and “very rare” thrombotic events.

As you may already know, the director of the Danish National Health Council, Soren Brostrom, explained that the decision was taken due to the “good control” of the pandemic in the European country and the availability of other vaccines. Tanja Erichsen, a senior official at the Danish Medicines Agency, said authorities “agree” with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that the vaccine is “effective”.

However, he said that because the epidemiological situation in Denmark “is better”, the vaccine will be discontinued.

Denmark, it must be said, suspended the administration of the drug AstraZeneca on March 11, after the discovery of several cases of young people who suffered from thrombosis after receiving it.

Across the country, a 60-year-old woman died from one of these episodes after being vaccinated.

IN ARGENTINA

To all this, and far from having the margin to rule out any vaccine, it must be said that 864,000 doses of this vaccine will arrive in the country tomorrow. The departure will arrive via the mechanism of the Global Fund for Access to Vaccines against Covid-19 (Covax), which has already sent a batch of 218,000 doses to Argentina on March 28.

As on this occasion, the vaccines will arrive in the holds of the scheduled passenger flight KL701, of the Dutch company KLM, which will land in Ezeiza at 6:10 am, departing from the city of Amsterdam.

The transfer to warehouses of AstraZeneca doses is possible because its storage conditions allow their storage and transport at a temperature above 0 degrees, and in smaller packages.

According to the specialist report, the AstraZeneca vaccine has an effectiveness of around 79% in preventing the coronavirus and was also 80% effective for those over 65, according to published scientific data, while in 100% of cases, complications and hospitalizations were avoided.

The AstraZeneca immunizer is the most used in the first wave of doses distributed by Covax, in which the World Health Organization (WHO) participates, which tries to guarantee free access to immunization for the 92 poorest economies of the planet.

However, the program suffered delays, after New Delhi halted exports of the drug produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII), to deal with the third wave of infections in that country.

WHAT WHO SAYS

With the intention of allaying doubts about this vaccine, in the last few hours the WHO Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said that the risk of suffering from thrombosis is “higher” if you have coronavirus only if you receive the vaccines developed by AstraZeneca or Janssen.

Kluge made the statements at a press conference on the occasion of the “very rare” side effects detected in patients who received the AstraZeneca vaccine, deemed “safe and effective” by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) which also continues to study it. . The EMA plans to issue a new recommendation “next week”.

In addition, it comes after the United States recommended the suspension of the drug Janssen (developed with Johnson & Johnson) while six cases of thrombi are being examined in more than 6.8 million people who received this inoculant.