A new thorn in AstraZeneca's side?
Delivered to France with many delays and suspended for three days following a suspicion of increased risk of thrombosis, the vaccine could find itself despite itself at the heart of a trial.
A lawyer plans to file a complaint following the death, two weeks after receiving an AstraZeneca injection, of a 38-year-old woman in Toulouse.
We take stock.
What happened ?
Several media, including Actu Toulouse, revealed on Tuesday that this woman had died on Monday, March 29.
She is believed to have succumbed to thrombosis two weeks after receiving an injection of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Her status as a social worker had enabled her to be vaccinated as a caregiver, but she did not suffer from any particular health problem.
Suffering from complications shortly after the injection, she was hospitalized at the CHU Purpan, in Toulouse.
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Me Etienne Boittin, who represents the family, said Thursday and Friday to France Bleu and 20 minutes away that he intended to file a complaint against X for manslaughter.
"The objective through this complaint is to open investigations to shed light on this affair," he said.
This same lawyer defends the relatives of the Nantes student who died in mid-March of an abdominal thrombosis after having received the AstraZeneca vaccine (without a causal link having been confirmed).
Is there a link with vaccination?
To date, there is nothing to establish it.
Neither the National Medicines Agency (ANSM) nor the Occitanie Regional Health Agency wanted to start this point for the moment.
The pharmacovigilance report is only published once a week by the ANSM and the last, expected this Friday, will cover the week of March 19 to 25.
The death in question should therefore not appear there because it will not have been investigated a priori.
But it could be the subject of a specific communication.
Where are we in the debate on AstraZeneca side effects?
The suspicions exist because of AstraZeneca's "pedigree".
For several weeks, a suspicion of increased risk of thrombosis has hovered over this product, to the point that the European Medicines Agency is continuing its investigations on the subject.
As a precautionary principle, many European countries - including France - had suspended vaccination for several days from mid-March.
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Last Friday, the ANSM still confirmed a "rare" risk of thrombosis.
"Nine cases of thrombosis of the large veins, atypical by their location (mainly cerebral, but also digestive), which may be associated with thrombocytopenia - decrease in the number of platelets in the blood, Editor's note - or coagulation disorders have been declared »Over the analyzed week, six times more than the previous one.
Nevertheless, the agency recalled that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) "confirmed the positive benefit / risk balance of vaccination with AstraZeneca in the prevention of Covid-19".
There was therefore no need, for the moment, to suspend the injections again.
But since his return to France, only those over 55 can be vaccinated with this antidote.
