Ziemlich viel zu lesen mit div. Links.
The Atlantic - We Need to Talk About the AstraZeneca VaccineMarch 30, 2021
For the moment, reports of a very rare, dangerous blood disorder among recipients cannot be ignored.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... ay/618451/It’s certainly reassuring that so few safety issues have emerged from COVID-19 vaccination on a global scale. The AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been approved for use in the U.S., but 145 million doses of other vaccines have been administered since December, and while lots of people have experienced headaches, fever, tiredness, and so on, according to the latest data from the CDC, reactions have almost always ended there. As is the case for vaccines in general, a small number of recipients—just a handful out of every million—have developed severe allergic reactions, which are easily treated. There’s zero indication, at this point, that the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines have caused any deaths at all.
In other words, the fact that a potential safety issue has emerged for the AstraZeneca vaccine is itself a rare exception. As of now, the EMA is continuing to investigate the blood-related syndrome, and another expert-committee meeting on the subject was scheduled for yesterday. In the meantime, the agency has added a warning to the vaccine’s drug leaflet for the European Union. “Seek immediate medical attention if you develop shortness of breath, chest pain, leg swelling, or persistent abdominal pain following vaccination,” it says. “Also, seek immediate medical attention if you experience after a few days severe or persistent headaches or blurred vision after vaccination, or experience skin bruising or pinpoint round spots beyond the site of vaccination.” Similar warnings have been issued in Canada and Australia.
Alerting people to that list of symptoms could save lives. But it might deter some people from vaccination. That’s why even cautious actions like the one taken by the EMA might be seen as dangerously misguided. Any move that shakes confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine could lead to broader, global harms, warns Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “While it’s easy to scare people, it’s very hard to unscare them," he told USA Today. “It creates the perception that these vaccines are dangerous.”
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SCIENCE TRANSLATION MEDICINE
Blood Clots and the AZ Vaccine, Revisited
March 30, 2021
....Here’s an excellent writeup at Science (open access) by Kai Kupferschmidt and Gretchen Vogel. A possible concern is what’s being called vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT) by Andreas Greinacher at Univ. Greifswald. This is a blood clotting syndrome that’s similar to what’s observed with the (already known) syndrome of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. That problem, first over 40 years ago, is a paradoxical effect that occurs in a few people of administering heparin for blood clotting problems and actually making the situation worse. The mechanism for HIT is apparently the generation of antibodies to the complex of heparin bound to platelet factor 4 (PF4) protein. That binding sets off further inappropriate platelet activation, and that’s why the free platelet count drops (the “thrombocytopenia” part) as new clots form and existing blood clots become larger and more dangerous. You’d be used to someone presenting with thrombocytopenia to be at risk for bleeding disorders, not suffering from too many blood clots, but HIT is coming around from the other direction.
reinacher’s team showed that patients who developed clotting disorders after vaccination showed the anti-heparin/PF4 antibodies, as in HIT, but it looks like these also bind to PF4 even when it’s not complexed to heparin. It’s possible that this happens (at least partially) via the adenovirus vector binding to platelets, but the details aren’t clear. There apparently is a subset of “classic” HIT cases who have shown this atypical PF4-alone antibody binding, so it’s a phenomenon that can happen without vaccination. The question, though, is whether vaccination is making it more likely, and whether there are particular populations who are more at risk....
..It’s also worth remembering that HIT (and presumably VIPIT, if it does turn out to be a real subset) can be treated with non-heparin anti-clotting drugs and/or by immunoglobin infusions, so the attempts by the EMA and others to raise awareness among physicians of this side effect are well worth it...
Am 19. März 2021 (sowie 18.3.2021) war bei CBC News (Canada) zu lesen, dass die USA / Biden den noch nicht zugelassenen Impfstoff AstraZeneca großzügig den Kanadiern (ca. 1,5 Mio Dosen) und Mexikanern (ca. 2,5 Mio) leihen will. Rückgabe noch dieses Jahr.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/vaccines- ... -1.5956881"We're able to announce that we are lending a portion of our releasable AstraZeneca vaccines to Mexico and to Canada," said Jeffrey Zients, the White House co-ordinator for the COVID-19 response.
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Vaccines were sitting unused in the U.S. 
White House officials, aware of the potential for political blow back at home over exporting vaccines during a pandemic, said the decision would not affect the U.S.'s own immunization schedule: the country plans to have enough supply for all Americans by May 31.
This transfer involves a product Americans aren't currently using. The U.S. has yet to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine, and is sending some of the doses it has stockpiled
before they risk the threat of expiring.
The country has also vaccinated its residents at a rate four times faster than Canada's. On Friday, the U.S. President Joe Biden's administration celebrated news that 100 million vaccine doses have been administered in 58 days, well ahead of its stated target.
Canada and Mexico will return the doses to the U.S. later this year, Zients said. He said the return would be handled through AstraZeneca.
CNN - 22. März 2021
FDA, CDC advisers say to expect a lot of questions about AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/19/heal ... index.htmlThe government advisers CNN spoke to said if the AstraZeneca vaccine is distributed in the US, they worry Americans may perceive it as being inferior to the three that are already being distributed.
"I'm really concerned there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say 'thanks very much but no' to AstraZeneca because of all this publicity," said Schaffner, the CDC adviser.
Den Impfstoff AstraZenca verleiht man (USA) an die beiden Nachbarn, bevor Millionen Impfstoffe verfallen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/p ... tates.html The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World NeedsThose tens of millions of doses from AstraZeneca are waiting for trial results, while countries that authorized the vaccine beg to have them.
Berliner Zeitung - 12. März 2021
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/me ... -li.145645Ungenutzte Ampullen:
Bericht:
In den USA stapeln sich Millionen Dosen AstrazenecaAllein 30 Millionen Impfdosen seien bereits in einer Anlage im Bundesstaat Ohio abgefüllt, weitere Dutzende Millionen Dosen in einem Labor in Maryland produziert worden, schrieb die Zeitung. Der große Vorrat an diesem bereits in mehr als 70 Ländern zugelassenen Impfstoff habe zu einer Diskussion in Washington darüber geführt, ob dieser nicht an andere Länder abgegeben werden solle, die ihn mehr benötigten.
A propos, Di.abend bei Lanz, das war echt lustig: 
