Spain has joined this Monday the twenty European countries that have suspended the administration of the AstraZenaca vaccine as a precaution, given the possibility that it may be behind several cases of severe thrombosis. The decision was made at the meeting of the Interterritorial Health Council convened this afternoon urgently by the Ministry of Health.
In a statement, the Ministry explains that the Spanish Medicines Agency had already been reporting throughout the last week the notification of several cases of thrombotic events in some European countries, including Spain, "temporarily related to the administration of the Covid-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca".
"The initial evaluation of these reported cases of thrombotic events did not show a disproportion between the number of cases reported among vaccinated people and the number of cases that occur naturally in the general population," they add, noting that they also ruled out that there could be a problem with a specific batch.
However, "over the past Saturday and Sunday and during today, some notifications of cerebral venous thrombosis have been received that need to be studied further, as they are very rare in the general population", they point out from the Ministry. "Although the number of notifications is very low in relation to the number of people who have received the vaccine, it could exceed the number of cases that are expected in the general population," they add, insisting that "it is necessary to analyze these cases to know if, in addition to there being a temporal relationship with the administration of the vaccine, there is a possible causal relationship".
It is estimated that more than 17 million people have received the AstraZeneca vaccine in the United Kingdom and the European Union. "The AEMPS and the rest of the medicines agencies coordinated by the EMA are working to collect and analyze the available information on this signal as quickly as possible," concludes the Ministry of Health, which insists that until now, "the number of cases reported is very low in proportion to the number of people vaccinated".
Approximately six million doses of this vaccine have been administered in the EU and the AEMPS has been aware of at least 11 cases of thrombosis of cerebral venous sinuses reported in the European Union, two of them reported this Monday. "The evaluation of this type of signals may end up finding an alternative cause to the administration of the vaccine or, in the event that it is attributable to the vaccine, with measures that try to minimize the risk as much as possible, such as the identification of factors that predispose to the appearance of this type of thrombosis", they add. However, for the moment it has decided that the "prudent" thing is to suspend the administration of this vaccine for the next two weeks.
It should be remembered that AstraZeneca's was the only vaccine that was not being administered to older people. In the case of Spain, it set the limit from 55 years of age.
