AstraZeneca has been embroiled in a class action lawsuit for its Covid-19 vaccine, admitting that the vaccine may cause incidences of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).
As reported by The Telegraph on 28 April, the pharma giant wrote in a legal document submitted to the UK High Court in February, “It is admitted that the AstraZeneca vaccine can, in very rare cases, cause TTS. The causal mechanism is not known.” TTS is known to cause blood clots and low blood platelet counts.
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By GlobalDataA total of 51 cases have been filed in the High Court by victims and their families, with The Telegraph reporting that the plaintiffs are seeking compensation valued at approximately GBP 100m.
The vaccine, sold under brand names Covishield and Vaxzevria, has previously been linked to a risk of blood clots. In April 2021, the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) safety committee reported that a jab of the vaccine was associated with blood clots in the brain, abdomen, and arteries as well as thrombocytopenia. At the time, the EMA and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) declared that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the potential risks and encouraged people to get vaccinated.
In a November 2021 press release, AstraZeneca reported that two billion doses of its vaccine were supplied to countries across the world less than 12 months after the first approval. The pharma giant also saw profits from its Covid-19 vaccine for the first time in 2022 and reported that it had delivered approximately 102 million doses of its vaccine through COVAX in Q4 2022.
AstraZeneca’s admission follows a year of legal battles for the lawsuit that alleges that the vaccine caused death and serious injury in multiple instances. According to The Telegraph, the first case was filed in 2023 when a patient reported that the vaccination left him with a permanent brain injury that developed from a blood clot and a bleed in the brain.
As per a 29 April coroner’s report from the UK Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, the death of a 28-year-old patient is the latest case to associate blood clot side effects to AstraZeneca’s vaccine. The report concluded that the patient died from cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and Covid-19 vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia.
This is not the first time in recent months that AstraZeneca has been embattled with lawsuits. In October 2023, the company paid $425m (£352.37m) to settle lawsuits that claimed its heartburn medications, Nexium (esomeprazole) and Prilosec (omeprazole), caused chronic kidney disease.
