British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing its COVID-19 vaccine Vaxzevria, one of the first to come to market during the pandemic, from sale, citing a drop in demand.
The group reports a “surplus of updated vaccines” in the face of different variants of the virus and a “decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer manufactured or distributed”, in a press release.
“AstraZeneca has therefore made the decision to initiate the withdrawal of the marketing authorization for Vaxzevria in Europe,” according to this press release received by AFP on Wednesday.
The European medicines authority, the EMA, wrote on its website on Tuesday that the sales authorization for Vaxzevria had been withdrawn “at the request of the holder of the marketing authorization”, namely the pharmaceutical laboratory.
The group will also “work with other regulators around the world to initiate the withdrawal of marketing authorizations for Vaxzevria where there is no expected future demand for the vaccine”.
In its press release, AstraZeneca said it wanted to “conclude this chapter”.
A source close to AstraZeneca told AFP that there had been “no sales for some time”.
“We are incredibly proud of the role that Vaxzevria has played in ending the pandemic,” adds the group in its press release, affirming that “according to independent estimates, more than 6.5 million lives were saved during the pandemic alone.” first year of use” of the serum, “and more than three billion doses have been distributed around the world.”
Reverse
If AstraZeneca’s profit jumped 21% year-on-year in the first quarter, driven particularly by oncology sales, the group has been reporting for months a constant decline in sales of drugs linked to COVID – just like its rival GSK, which had been largely left behind in the race to develop a vaccine.
This vaccine, one of the very first on the market even though serums were not AstraZeneca’s specialty, had suffered several setbacks, including a green light for marketing which never arrived in the United States.
It also experienced delivery problems in Europe, combined with suspicions of increased risks of thrombosis following several deaths.
AstraZeneca says it updated information on Vaxzevria in April 2021, with the agreement of the British regulator MHRA, to include the possibility that it could trigger thrombosis in rare cases.
The United Kingdom, which first relied on Vaxzevria at the start of its anti-COVID vaccination campaign, then replaced it with competing serums.
The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were quickly largely abandoned in favor of their Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna counterparts, both with messenger RNA, in European countries.
AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, however, retained a central place in Covax, an international COVID vaccination aid system for less wealthy countries.
AstraZeneca regularly recalls that regulators and various states which authorized the vaccine considered that “the benefits of vaccination largely eclipsed the risks of extremely rare side effects”.
The vaccine has no longer been available in Australia since last year in particular.
The thrombosis syndromes in question, thrombocytopenia (TTS), cause the formation of a blood clot with potentially fatal consequences. This rare syndrome occurred in about 2 to 3 people in 100,000 who were vaccinated with the AstraZeneca serum.
TTS appears to be more severe in young women. Almost all reported cases of TTS have occurred after the first dose of vaccine.
The group is facing several legal proceedings over the consequences of the vaccine, including one in the United Kingdom carried out on behalf of 51 plaintiffs.