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ROME, March 16 (Reuters) - The decision by Germany, France
and Italy to suspend AstraZeneca's COVID-19 shots after
several countries reported possible serious side-effects is a
"political one", the director general of Italy's medicines
authority AIFA said on Tuesday.
"We got to the point of a suspension because several
European countries, including Germany and France, preferred to
interrupt vaccinations... to put them on hold in order to carry
out checks. The choice is a political one," Nicola Magrini told
daily la Repubblica in an interview.
Magrini said that the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe and that
the benefit to risk ratio of the jab is "widely positive". There
have been eight deaths and four cases of serious side-effects
following vaccinations in Italy, he added.
Aifa will take two to three days to collect all required
data and once "doubts are cleared we can carry on at a faster
speed than before," Magrini said.
(Reporting by Giulia Segreti)
