Covid-19: Astrazeneca withdraws Vaxzevria vaccine from the market for commercial reasons | Coronavirus

The British pharmaceutical giant Astrazeneca withdrew from the market this Wednesday, for commercial reasons, its vaccine against Covid-19 Vaxzevria, one of the first to be marketed during the pandemic.

“Given that multiple vaccines against Covid-19 have been developed, there is a surplus of updated vaccines” given the different variants of the virus, “which resulted in a decrease in demand”explained the pharmaceutical company, in a statement.

The announcement that the vaccine would no longer be sold from this Wednesday had been made at the beginning of the week by the pharmaceutical company.

At the end of April, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended updating vaccines against covid-19 for the 2024/2025 vaccination campaign, to protect against the new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. , JN.1.

“JN.1 differs from the XBB family targeted by previous updated vaccines and has now surpassed the XBB variants to become the most circulating variant worldwide”he highlights.

Companies currently developing new Covid-19 vaccines that do not target JN.1 were also encouraged to contact the EMA to discuss strategies for changing the composition of their vaccines.

Remember that, in February 2021, Portugal advised against administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 65 years of age. A few months later, in April, the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) recommended it only for those over 60 years of age. The decision came after the European Medicines Agency admitted the existence of a link between this vaccine and rare cases of thromboembolism associated with a marked drop in platelets. It was due to the “precautionary principle” that the Portuguese authorities decided to do so, thus suspending the immunization of the younger population with this vaccine.