Conspiracy Theories Are True! Why Did AstraZeneca Withdraw Its COVID-19 Vaccine Worldwide?

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca's announcement of the withdrawal of its COVID-19 vaccine worldwide shook the social media platforms, causing unprecedented uproar and anxiety, especially among those who were injected with this vaccine.

After several reports indicated that the company admitted in documents that its vaccine causes side effects such as blood clots and low platelet counts, the company recently began withdrawing it from global markets.

Many described the action taken by AstraZeneca as a dangerous matter, considering that people’s bodies and souls have become a field for experiments. The evidence for this is that the company announced its withdrawal more than two years after it was imposed.

Others also called for filing a case against the British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, holding it accountable for this, and demanding compensation, as some British citizens did.

Lawyers representing British families suing the company say the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is flawed and its effectiveness is greatly exaggerated.

COVID-19 Vaccine

When the COVID-19 vaccines were being administered, not many people were aware that it was being done without the completion of phase-3 trials. 

Thousands of women reported abnormalities in their menstrual cycles, which was confirmed much later as a side effect of the vaccine in a study published in September 2022, said Dr. Sujata Mittal, a gynecologist and oncologist.

AstraZeneca recently decided to withdraw its Vaxzevria (Covishield) vaccine against the Coronavirus from global markets, months after it discovered a serious side effect.

In a statement, the British company justified the withdrawal of the vaccine for commercial reasons, explaining that the vaccine was not manufactured or supplied due to the emergence of newer vaccines that deal with new versions of the virus.

The company made its decision on March 5, and it entered into force on May 7, 2024. 

After this decision, it became impossible to use its vaccine in the European Union legally, amid expectations of similar decisions being issued in Britain and some other countries that issued licenses to use the vaccine.

Other countries have already stopped providing the vaccine. It has not been available for use in Australia since March 2023, although its use has already been phased out from June 2021 due to the widespread availability of newer vaccines.

In recent months, a rare side effect of the vaccine was discovered, causing blood clots and low blood platelets, and the voices of those affected became louder, demanding valuable compensation for the health damage they suffered from the vaccine.

Currently, a class action lawsuit is suing pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca alleging that its vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford, caused death and serious injury in dozens of cases.

In documents submitted to the court last February, AstraZeneca admitted that its vaccine — which was announced by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson upon its launch as a victory for British science — may in some cases cause Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TSS).

It is noteworthy that TSS has caused at least 81 deaths in Britain, and hundreds of serious injuries.

Overall, nearly one in five people with the condition died, according to figures from the UK government’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

The UK High Court is currently examining 51 cases filed against AstraZeneca, with victims and grieving relatives seeking damages estimated to be worth up to £100 million.

It is noteworthy that the first lawsuit was filed last year by Jamie Scott, a father of two children who suffered a permanent brain injury after suffering a blood clot and a brain hemorrhage that prevented him from working after receiving the vaccine in April 2021.

The company disputes these claims, but accepted in a legal document it submitted to the High Court last February that its coronavirus vaccine could, in very rare cases, cause TTS.

According to a report in The Guardian, this rare syndrome occurs in about two to three people out of every 100,000 vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Health Problems

Earlier, the World Health Organization stated that the vaccine is safe and effective for all individuals aged 18 years and above, and that the negative impact that prompted legal action was very rare.

It is noteworthy that the AstraZeneca vaccine was developed in cooperation with the University of Oxford and produced by the Indian Serum Institute, and was widely administered in more than 150 countries, including Britain and India.

Some studies conducted during the pandemic revealed that the vaccine was 60-80% effective in protecting against the coronavirus.

Billions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were distributed to poor countries through a program coordinated by the United Nations, because it was cheaper and easier to produce and distribute.

However, in the months following the release of the drug, scientists identified the potential serious side effects of the vaccine, and then recommended giving an alternative vaccine to those under forty because the risk of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweighs the harm posed by COVID-19.

The company indicated that the emergence of many mutated versions of the virus led to the development of many updated vaccines, which led to a decrease in demand for Vaxzevria, which is not currently manufactured or distributed, adding that it decided to withdraw it for this very reason.

Studies later indicated that the more expensive mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna provided better protection against COVID-19 and its many variants, and most countries subsequently switched to those vaccines.

Scientists had first identified a link between the vaccine and a disease called vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), in March 2021, shortly after the start of the coronavirus vaccine rollout.

Currently, the company insists that its decision to withdraw the vaccine is not related to lawsuits or the possibility of it causing the aforementioned health problems, expressing its pride in the role that the Vaxzevria vaccine played in fighting the Coronavirus pandemic.

According to estimates, over 6.5 million lives were saved in the first year of using the AstraZeneca vaccine alone and over three billion doses were supplied globally.

“Our efforts have been recognized by governments around the world and are widely viewed as a critical component in ending the global pandemic,” she added.

Ineffective Vaccines 

On the other hand, lawyers representing the families suing the pharmaceutical giant say that the vaccine was not as safe as individuals expected, and they are suing the company, based in Cambridge, under the Consumer Protection Act of 1987.

The UK government has been running its own vaccine compensation scheme for about two years, but victims claim that a compensation of £120,000 is insufficient.

The Telegraph reported that of the 163 batches provided by the government by last February, at least 158 had gone to recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Vaccine Damage Payment System grants compensation to those who were injured by vaccines or to their relatives, as less than 5 people received vaccines other than AstraZeneca under the program.

The UK government had largely stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine by the autumn of 2021, by which time it had administered about 50 million doses in the UK.

The UK Government stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine by the autumn of 2021, by which time it had supplied about 50 million doses in the UK. 

It is noteworthy that AstraZeneca is the second-largest company in the UK, with a market value of more than £170 billion.

AstraZeneca recently began moving into respiratory syncytial virus vaccines and obesity drugs through several deals last year after a slowdown in growth as COVID-19 medicine sales declined.

In turn, Dr. Mohamed Salem, head of the epidemiology department in a hospital in Syria, said in a statement to Al-Estiklal that “given that the COVID-19 vaccine campaign was the largest in world history and had to be undertaken with unprecedented speed, such tragedies were inevitable.

“Conspiracy theorists have seized on AstraZeneca's recent court admission, claiming it proves that drug companies pushed dangerous and ineffective vaccines into the world,” he added.

“It is a tragedy for the people affected, but it is not a reason to reject vaccines completely,” Dr. Salem stressed.