Brazil: return of pressure for vaccine brings back controversy about AstraZeneca in pregnant women
As soon as he took power, the inaugurated president, Lula da Silva (PT), and his health team made clear threats to those who were not vaccinated. As already announced in the campaign, the PT must increase pressure for vaccines and impose restrictions on those who do not accept being guinea pigs in the vaccine experiment.
The expectation of a new state imposition of what became known in the pandemic as health apartheid made social media profiles recall cases of suspicious deaths and serious side effects involving the use of “vaccines”.
One of the cases remembered was the indiscriminate use of AstraZeneca in pregnant women, even with the pharmaceutical’s own warning that the serum had not been tested in pregnant and lactating women.
“The company admits that its vaccine has never been tested on pregnant women. Does anyone know if this was informed to Brazilian pregnant women?”, wrote journalist Paula Schmitt, on Twiiter, remembering that Fiocruz tried to impose 15-year secrecy on “secret” files of pharmaceutical companies.
In the publication, the journalist includes a link that leads to a clinical trial in which the pharmaceutical company admits that it does not have data on the vaccination of pregnant and lactating women. Paula also recalls that the former president of Fiocruz, Nísia Trindade, is the new Minister of Health.
Does she know about the Astrazeneca vaccine, about which the president of Fiocruz decreed 15-year secrecy and was awarded the Ministry of Health? The company admits that its vaccine has never been tested on pregnant women. Does anyone know if this was informed to Brazilian pregnant women?
— Paula Schmitt (@schmittpaula) January 5, 2023
“Two friends of mine lost their babies after the 1st dose. One of them will not be able to generate more babies”, said a profile when commenting on the journalist’s publication.
Used without restrictions in Brazil in early 2021, AstraZeneca was associated with numerous cases of miscarriage and serious side effects in pregnant women. Several social media profiles, at the time, reported suspicious deaths of pregnant women after immunization with the anti-covid serum.
On March 12, 2021, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) authorized the use of AstraZeneca in the Brazilian population without warning about the risks of inoculation in pregnant women. The Agency’s social networks and adverse event notification system were quickly filled with serious reports involving pregnant women after inoculation with the serum.
Less than two months later, on May 10, 2021, Anvisa recommended the immediate suspension of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in pregnant women. According to the Agency, the decision was taken based on “the result of the constant monitoring of adverse events on the covid vaccines in use in the country”.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Anvisa said that the off-label use of AstraZeneca could be done “upon individual evaluation by a health professional”. The Agency’s guidance contrasts with its position unfavorable to the off-label use of drugs widely known by medicine in the early treatment of the Chinese disease.
It turns out that in documents sent to governments in early 2021, the AstraZeneca producer admits not having tested the serum on pregnant and lactating women.
In a report sent to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on January 29, 2021, the pharmaceutical company admits that vaccine studies “excluded pregnant/nursing women, participants with severe immunodeficiency or participants with serious underlying disease”. The complete document can be read by clicking here.
A day earlier, the pharmaceutical company sent a report to the Australian government with the vaccine data gathered up to that point. The document contains the same caveat made to the EMA: “Women who were pregnant, lactating or intending to become pregnant were excluded from the Oxford University studies”. Elsewhere, the document says that “there were a small number of pregnant women exposed in the clinical trial, but the pregnancy outcomes are unknown.”
The document sent by the AstraZeneca producer to the Australian government can be seen in full by clicking here.
In a publication made in June of this year on its website, the World Health Organization (WHO) says that data on vaccination with AstraZeneca in pregnant women are “scarce” and the available information is not sufficient to “evaluate the safety of the vaccine in pregnancy”.
With information from Brasil Sem Medo
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