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VACCINE

Paris prosecutors open manslaughter probe into deaths following AstraZeneca vaccines

Paris prosecutors are taking on and combining into a involuntary manslaughter probe three separate investigations over deaths of three people who were given the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in France, they said on Wednesday.

Published: 28 April 2021 14:53 CEST
Paris prosecutors open manslaughter probe into deaths following AstraZeneca vaccines
Photo: Joel Saget/AFP

Prosecutors specialised in leading complex investigations into health products will take on the preliminary probes already opened after complaints were filed in Toulouse, Paris and Nantes.

The initial investigations had been carried out by regional prosecutors.

According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the plaintiffs are questioning if there was a causal role of the Astrazeneca vaccine in the deaths of their loved ones.

“We first went to local prosecutors for the sake of speed and to have autopsies and then asked them to transfer the file to Paris,” Etienne Boittin, the lawyer behind the complaints told AFP.

In Nantes, a medical student aged 26 died suddenly of a blood clot on March 18th just a few days after getting vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab. The case from Toulouse concerns a social worker aged 38 who also died of a blood clot after her health deteriorated sharply after getting the jab.

Boittin said he was handling fifteen cases of people who died in France after having been vaccinated with AstraZeneca, the vast majority of them aged “under 60 years”.

France’s national health authority Haute autorité de Santé (HAS) last month said the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be given to those aged 55 and over because of reports of potentially deadly blood clots in a very small number of younger people vaccinated.

The move is broadly similar to actions taken by several European countries although Denmark has banned the use of the vaccine outright.

The authorities have also said under 55s who received a first injection of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine should be given a second jab from a different producer.

However France has said it has full confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine for the over 55s and emphasised it retains a key role in the vaccine rollout.

“You are 50 times more likely to get a vein blood clot crossing the Atlantic by plane than getting vaccinated with AstraZeneca. Vaccines protect us from Covid-19. Let’s not give into mistrust!” Health Minister Olivier Véran said earlier this month.

Member comments

  1. Frankly they should open an enquiry into manslaughter by the government due to their complete inability to organise the vaccination process in a timely fashion which resulted in many preventable deaths.

  2. People do not want that AstraZeneca poison put into their arms, neither do they want any other covid-19 injection. Why isn’t this understood?

      1. I agree vaccines aren’t a poison. I didn’t say they are.
        What you don’t understand is that AZ is not a vaccine, it’s an injection.
        Go and read up about what vaccines really are.

        1. Hi Danielle
          Most vaccines, but not all, are injections. AZ is definitely a vaccine against Covid.
          Ken

        2. Daniela, it’s entirely understandable to feel concerned about lethal side effects of vaccines, but you shouldn’t confuse valid subjective concerns with valid objective measurements and entirely discard the latter. It is possible to comprehend and respect both and to make a well-informed decision. The world is complicated, and we should fully acknowledge that and make efforts to understand, instead of simplifying and trivializing.

  3. I fully understand Daniela, it is all nice and well to throw procentages for chances around, for those three healthy peoplpe and their families it was 100% bad luck, of you can call it that. What about if you are between 55 and 60? I understand very few of those women thinking Astrazeneca is a good idea! That’s only logic.

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HEALTH

France’s Covid-19 app to be ‘put to sleep’

France's Covid-tracker app, used for months for the all-important 'health pass' will be switched off today, health officials have confirmed.

Published: 30 June 2023 13:29 CEST
France’s Covid-19 app to be 'put to sleep'

Covid-19 screening in France reaches an important milestone on Friday, June 30th, 2023 – when the TousAntiCovid app is officially ‘put to sleep’.

The app, which was launched in June 2020 as France came out of its first lockdown of the pandemic and has undergone a number of iterations, including as a delivery device for the health pass, will be switched off. 

For most people, this anniversary will pass without mention. Few people have consulted the app in recent months, and it has sat dormant on many smartphones since France’s Covid-19 health pass requirement was suspended in March 2022.

Meanwhile, the Système d’Informations de DEPistage (SI-DEP) interface – which has been informing people about their test results since the Spring of 2020 – is also being shut down on June 30th, as per legal requirements.

The SI-DEP shutdown means that it will also be impossible to retrieve Covid test certificates issued before June 30th, should the need arise. All data held by the database will be “destroyed”, officials have said.

It has handled more than 320 million antigen and PCR tests since it was introduced.

This does not mean that testing for Covid-19 has stopped, or is now unnecessary. As reported recently, more than 1,000 deaths a week in Europe are still caused by the virus.

The shutdown of the national information system does not mean that people in France cannot still book an appointment for an antigen test at a pharmacy, or a PCR test at a laboratory. But the number of people going for testing is declining rapidly. In recent days, according to Le Parisien, just 15,000 people in France took a Covid test – the lowest number, it said, since the pandemic started.

Reimbursement rules for testing changed on March 1st, with only certain categories of people – minors, those aged 65 and over, or immunosuppressed patients – covered for the entire cost of testing.

From Friday, only PCR test results will be transmitted to authorities for data purposes, meaning pharmacists that only offer antigen testing will be locked out of the online interface to record test results.

The reason for the shift in priorities is to maintain “minimal epidemiological surveillance”, the Ministry of Health has reportedly told scientists.

As a result test certificates, showing a positive or negative result, will no longer be issued from July 1st. Since February 1st, anyone taking a test has had to give consent to share their data in order to obtain a certificate. 

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