EU may restrict Covid-19 vaccine exports, Von Der Leyen says, as Europe faces third wave Professor says decision by European countries to halt AstraZeneca vaccine ‘not logical’
Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 10:49 Updated: Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 13:38
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union may get more restrictive in exporting Covid-19 vaccines to safeguard essential jabs for its own citizens. Video: EU
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said the European Union may get more restrictive in exporting Covid-19 vaccines to safeguard essential jabs for its own citizens. Photograph: Johanna Geron / EPA
The European Union may get more restrictive in exporting Covid-19 vaccines to safeguard essential jabs for its own citizens facing a third wave of the pandemic, the head of the bloc’s executive said on Wednesday.
There is no evidence that blood clots are any more likely to occur after people are given AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday, citing the country's medicine regulator. "As the MHRA (Britain's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) has said, blood clots occur naturally but there is no evidence that they are any more likely to occur following vaccination, so as such there's no evidence of any causal link between blood clots and the AZ vaccine," he told reporters.
Serum Institute in deal with U.S. based biotech firm to manufacture several doses
Novavax, a U.S.-based biotechnology company developing a recombinant vaccine for COVID-19, announced a final efficacy of 96.4% against mild, moderate and severe disease caused by the original SARS-CoV-2 strain in a pivotal Phase 3 trial in the United Kingdom (U.K.).
In January, the company reported that its vaccine had proved to have 89% efficacy in preventing the infection in some trial volunteers in the United Kingdom.
The Serum Institute of India has an agreement with Novavax to manufacture several doses.
It is likely to conduct a bridging study (that determines the vaccine’s safety and immunogenicity in Indians).
The UK's medicine regulator said on Thursday that Britons should keep on getting their COVID-19 vaccines, including the shot developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca, after Denmark and some other countries restricted their use of it. Denmark is suspending for two weeks the use of AstraZeneca's vaccine after reports of the formation of blood clots in some who have been vaccinated, including one death in Denmark, Danish authorities said. Norway joined Denmark in halting its roll-out of the shot after reports of blood clots, while Italy banned a batch of the vaccine after notifications of some serious adverse effects.