Why vaccine safety experts are putting the breaks on AstraZeneca

The following article was written by Gretchen Vogel and Kai Kupferschmidt, and was published on March 17, 2021 by Science.

In this article, the authors offers a scientific rationale for the pause in AstraZeneca in Europe, and why vaccine experts are taking the clotting issues (known medically as cerebral venous thrombosis or CVT) seriously even though there are only a few cases recorded.

Vaccine experts say that the unusual symptoms following vaccination may be “a very strong immunological reaction”, and that more patients may be suffering from the same concern, though exhibiting milder symptoms. According to Klaus Cichutek, head of German agency in charge of vaccine safety, a group of experts “agreed unanimously that there seemed to be a pattern here and that a link to the vaccine was not implausible and that this should be investigated”.

It is interesting to note that some recipients of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the US have developed a slightly similar blood condition called immune thrombocytopenia (ITP)

Editor’s Note: Why aren’t other countries pausing the rollout of all the experimental vaccines when similar blood disorders are being recorded among other vaccine recipients? If countries were able to stop AstraZeneca rollout, why aren’t they doing the same for Pfizer and Moderna despite these two vaccines causing larger numbers of adverse effects and deaths? Why is AstraZeneca being singled out?