The government does not want to waste any more time.
Faced with the "progression of the epidemic", the French High Authority of Health will update its recommendation on the AstraZeneca vaccine tomorrow morning "so that we can immediately resume the vaccination campaign tomorrow afternoon" with this serum.
"It is indeed the vaccination campaign that will allow us to emerge from this crisis", underlined Prime Minister Jean Castex, in his speech Thursday evening, recalling that nearly 7.5 million people were already vaccinated.
"The opinion confirms that the vaccine is not only very effective in combating the onset of serious forms of the disease but that it is also a safe, harmless vaccine," he reassures.
It is not associated with an increased risk of blood clot formation.
There are no issues related to specific lots or specific laboratories.
The prevention of hospitalization and death linked to Covid far outweighs the extremely low probability of developing side effects ”.
Jean Castex will be vaccinated on Friday, for example
In order to regain the confidence of the French, Prime Minister Jean Castex also declared that he would be vaccinated tomorrow with the AstraZeneca serum.
Deputies also affirmed their desire to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca to "reassure the French".
The Prime Minister also recalled that France had reached "a rate of daily vaccination among the highest in the European Union.
“We are vaccinating the most vulnerable people, we have almost completed the vaccination of residents of nursing homes.
We must go as far as possible to vaccinate people over 75 years old.
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Suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine: a "blow of the sledgehammer" which could leave traces
The move comes hours after the verdict of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which considers the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine "safe and effective" and "not associated" with a higher risk of blood clots or thromboembolic events.
In the process, Italy immediately announced the resumption of vaccination with the AstraZeneca serum from this Friday.
“The committee came to a clear scientific conclusion: this is a safe and effective vaccine,” EMA Executive Director Emer Cooke said in a video conference.
"Its benefits in protecting people against Covid-19, with the associated risks of death and hospitalization, outweigh the possible risks," she added.
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AstraZeneca: "A safe and effective vaccine", reassures the European Medicines Agency
However, the EMA is not in a position to “definitively exclude” a link between the vaccine developed by the Swedish-British laboratory AstraZeneca and rare coagulation disorders.
"Based on the available evidence, and after days of in-depth analysis" of the data, "we still cannot definitively rule out a link between these cases and the vaccine," stressed the EMA director, saying: " if it was me, I would get vaccinated tomorrow ”.
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The EMA's safety committee therefore recommended "to raise awareness of these potential risks and to ensure that they are included in the product information".
The EMA will also launch “additional investigations to learn more about these rare cases”.
About fifteen countries, including Germany, France and Italy, had suspended the use of this vaccine on Monday as a precaution, after the report of possible side effects, such as bleeding disorders and the formation of clots , even though the suspected cases were "very limited in our country", underlined Jean Castex.
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AstraZeneca suspended in France: a vaccine that has become essential in the French strategy
For France, the stakes in the recovery are enormous.
Because in recent weeks, we have witnessed a real rise in AstraZeneca stamped injections, the distribution of which began on February 6 throughout the country.
This vaccine is certainly still far from being the most administered in France (according to data published by Public Health France, 1,358,990 people received at least one dose of AstraZeneca on March 14, 2021), but it had gained momentum in these last weeks in the vaccination campaign.