No longer call it “AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine” but “Vaxzevria”! The European Medicines Agency stated on their website the product developed by the Swedish-British laboratory was changing its trade name, the one now reading on boxes sold in pharmacies.
A change of name raising many questions, given the situation the vaccine is in, and all the polemics it has been causing over weeks. The latest? Rare cases of thrombosis it causes in some people vaccinated and which correlation has been established by a Norwegian study several days ago. Cases of blood clots that led the French Haute Autorité de Santé to only recommend it in people over 55 years old; as cases of thrombosis have been found in younger people, especially in women.
Yet, this new name changes nothing about the product or composition: “Vaxzevria is made up of another virus (of the adenovirus family) that has been modified to contain the gene for making a protein from SARS-CoV-2”, the European Medicines Agency explains. The Agency goes on and says it “does not contain the virus itself and cannot cause COVID-19”.
For the record, as explained by our peers on BFMTV, a medicine often has several name: a chemical name – used by searchers in their works (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 for AstraZeneca vaccine) – and a generic name – given by WHO to enable the general public to identify it.
