AstraZeneca vaccine in Italy and in the EU, second dose and latest news after the European Commission has not renewed the contract with the company for the moment. Today’s Aifa note on rare thrombosis. From the fourth Pharmacovigilance Report on Covid-19 vaccines published by the Italian Medicines Agency, relating to the reports of suspected adverse reactions registered in the National Pharmacovigilance Network between 27 December 2020 and 26 April, it emerges that in Italy, so far, they have been entered into the national pharmacovigilance network 29 reports of intracranial venous thrombosis and 5 cases of atypical venous thrombosis, reported after the administration of the AstraZeneca anti-Covid Vaxzevria * vaccine. Most of these events (22 cases, 65%) involved women with an average age of about 48 years and only in a third of cases about men (12 cases, 35%) with an average age of about 52 years old. The mean time to onset was approximately 8 days after the first dose was administered. “The evaluation of the Italian cases of intracranial and atypical venous thrombosis in subjects vaccinated with Vaxzevria – observes Aifa in a note – is in line with the conclusions of the procedure of the European Medicines Agency”. On the Regions front, Piedmont said it was willing to accept the excess doses of AstraZeneca kept in the warehouses of those regions where citizens do not want to be vaccinated with this type of vaccine. The President of the Region Alberto Cirio explained that in Piedmont the doses of AstraZeneca currently in stock must be kept aside for the recalls to be guaranteed by the end of June, for this reason the few that remain available are sipped with not a few difficulties for the doctors of family to continue vaccinations given the lack of vaccines. Hence the willingness to accept the doses refused by other territories. Lombardy also said it was ready to accept the doses of AstraZeneca’s anti-Covid ‘shield’ refused by citizens of other regions. And Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino hospital in Genoa and a member of the Covid-19 crisis unit of Liguria, stressed that “the doses of vaccines from AstraZeneca and others that are not used because citizens refuse must be made immediately available to the Regions in which these vaccines are administered because they are favorably received by the population. It is very serious that there are millions of unused vaccines “. “As has been said many times – writes the expert – whoever refuses the vaccine means that they have not understood its importance. The Regions in which these vaccines have been used the most must be rewarded”, highlighted Bassetti. Covid of AstraZeneca, the president of the Gimbe Foundation Nino Cartabellotta, to the microphones of the broadcast ‘Italy has awakened’ on Radio Cusano Campus, observed: “Some regions have administered much less doses than others, in Sicily for example we are at 51%. Now the fact that the contract will not be renewed by the EU could lead to further reluctance on the part of people to make this vaccine “. Meanwhile, the National Commissioner Structure has ordered the sending of 35 thousand additional doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Abruzzo. This was announced by the councilor for health, Nicoletta Verì, who had sent a specific request to General Figliuolo on Saturday. “On the occasion of the General’s visit – explained Verì – he had proposed the need to have 35 thousand additional doses of AstraZeneca, in addition to those already planned, as with the current stocks in our pharmacies we could have difficulty in guaranteeing second doses for the teaching and non-teaching school staff and law enforcement. This is because in our region the waivers of this type of vaccine have been very limited compared to other areas of the country and many people over 60 and 70 have received the first administration of AstraZeneca in recent weeks “.
