Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, it has ravaged economics across several nations, devastating lifestyles and changed working conditions entirely. Some of the major vaccines which have found acceptance within the countries include the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, named Covishield, the Russian devised Sputnik V, the Bharat Biotech manufactured Covaxin, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines and so on.
While Covishield uses a weakened version of adenoviruses, Covaxin uses killed or destroyed coronaviruses. Sputnik V contains a combination of two different adenoviruses. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both mRNA vaccines.
Although the news about vaccination programmes are being discussed globally every day, one of the recent news concerning immunization is that Japan has suspended more than a 1.6million doses of the Moderna vaccine, in an attempt to prevent contamination.
Here’s all that you need to know about Japan’s suspension of Moderna vaccine doses.
Japan has been fairly good at managing the pandemic situation and it had quite a low rank among the countries with covid cases globally. A recent record shows that presently there are 20000+ confirmed cases of coronavirus in Japan, with 99 doses of vaccination being administered per 100 people in the country.
Japan had so far approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (in February 2021), the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine and the Moderna vaccine ( both in May 2021).
Takeda Pharmaceutical, which is responsible for the sale and distribution of vaccines in Japan, had stated that three entire batches of the Moderna Vaccine have been put on hold solely because of “an abundance of caution”. Apart from this Moderna has also asserted that they would work with regulators or managers and further look into the matter and investigate it.
This suspension of so many doses of the Moderna vaccines in Japan and these statements by Moderna comes after the health ministry of Japan made a statement concerning the discovery of “foreign materials” in some of the doses in a batch containing more than 560000 vials of the Moderna vaccines. Moderna asserted that there have been no questions raised on their safety or efficiency issues so far, and hence they are looking forward to the investigation of the matter.
However, Moderna’s statements testify of speculations about the cause of contamination which they think is likely to occur at a contract site in Spain.
The team of Moderna vaccines have chosen not to elaborate any further on this matter of apprehended contamination thereby leading to the suspension of more than 1.6 million doses of its vaccine in Japan. No details of the “foreign materials’ ‘ found in the Moderna vaccine doses have been known so far but the Takeda group, having conducted an emergency examination, has mentioned those to be particulate matter.
According to the reports of the Japan Times newspaper, so far 39 vials of the Moderna vaccine are “contaminated” or in the least impacted in some way.
The health ministry of Japan has thus published the details of those vials or batches of the vaccine to make more people aware and be cautious whether they have got a contaminated dose of Moderna. Japan’s sudden suspension of the Moderna vaccine thus shows the country’s efficiency in taking preventive measures rapidly.
