Now anti-vaxxers turn on Pfizer and Moderna after AstraZeneca's decision to withdraw Covid jab sparks panic about rare but deadly clotting side effect (and pockets the pharma titan £2.5billion)

Anti-vaxxers today called for Pfizer and Moderna to urgently withdraw their Covid jabs in the wake of heightened safety fears.

AstraZeneca's landmark decision to withdraw its lockdown-banishing vaccine from global markets sparked hysteria online about the rival jabs – made using pioneering tech never utilised until the virus crisis spawned.

The UK-based pharmaceutical titan insisted its decision was a commercial one due to demand being slim, with its jab no longer being manufactured. 

Ministers favour superior mRNA jabs, like those of Pfizer and Moderna, nowadays — yet these themselves have been wrongly linked by conspiracy theorists to a rise in heart-related deaths.  

Once heralded as a 'triumph for British science', AstraZeneca's vaccine, created with scientists at Oxford University, is estimated to have saved millions of lives during the pandemic.

Yet is has faced intense scrutiny in recent months for a rare side effect which causes blood clots. 

Eighty-one deaths in Britain have been linked to the blood clotting complication that AstraZeneca is facing legal action over. None of these are proven and are based on self-reported submissions to the UK's medicines regulator. 

Yet experts insist the jab is still safe.

Critics of the vaccine roll-outs, which scientists say consigned lockdowns to history at a time when nations had no other weapons in their arsenal, today weaponised the firm's withdrawal.

Swedish journalist and political commentator Peter Imanuelsen labelled the move as 'massive', and said 'raise your hand if you agree Pfizer and Moderna should be next'. 

Mr Imanuelsen, who boasts 600,000 followers on X/Twitter as 'Peter Sweden', then added the raise your hand emoji. 

In 2017, Mr Imanuelsen was accused of denying the Holocaust in social media posts. One allegedly claimed 'Hitler had some good points'. At the time he claimed these screengrabs were fabricated. 

Mr Imanuelsen's thoughts were echoed by other social media users, including one account with over 9,000 followers who said: 'Why has the AstraZeneca vaccine been withdrawn but the Pfizer vaccine hasn't? 

'According to the EU three times more people have died following the Pfizer than the AZ.' 

Figures released by the European Medicines Agency in 2023 show more than 11,000 people are thought to have died after receiving a Covid vaccine. 

Of these, around 8,000 were attributed to a Pfizer jab and 1,500 AstraZeneca. 

Yet not all of these deaths are proven. Only a fraction are thought to have actually been caused by the vaccine. 

As of May 6, however, 664.64million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's jabs have been administered in the EU since late 2020.

AstraZeneca doses, in comparison, stand at 67.18million. 

Other tweets questioned the effectiveness of mRNA jabs, with one by user @MarwanNawaz claiming the EU had thrown 'a bone to quieten the barking dogs by removing its approval of the non-mRNA AstraZeneca vaccine'.

They added: 'Two gene editing mRNA vaccines from BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines retain approval.'  

Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is a genetic blueprint that instructs cells to manufacture proteins in the body.

For Covid, the mRNA vaccine instructs cells to make the spike protein found on the surface of the virus itself. It does not 'gene edit', unlike other therapies designed to disable genes. 

These harmless proteins 'train' the immune system to recognise the virus and then to make cells that fight it if someone later gets infected with the real thing.

As well as reenergizing anti-vaxxers, AstraZeneca's vaccine withdrawal saw its shares hit a record high.

The firm's share prices were up more than 1.4 per cent to £122.84 this afternoon after its announcement, adding around £2.5billion to its market valuation.

AstraZeneca's shares have almost doubled in value since March 2020, when Covid lockdowns brought the world's economy to a standstill.  

AstraZeneca saw a slowdown in growth last year as Covid medicines sales declined, with it focusing instead on respiratory syncytial virus vaccines and obesity drug deals. 

Blockbuster sales of its cancer drugs, also saw it claim double-digit growth in the first three months of 2024. 

The company insisted today that the jab, known as Vaxzevria, was being removed voluntarily from the EU for commercial reasons, given demand had shifted to the newer updated vaccines.

Similar applications to withdraw the jab will be made in other countries which had previously approved it, including the UK.

A spokesperson said: 'We are incredibly proud of the role Vaxzevria played in ending the global pandemic.

'According to independent estimates, over 6.5million lives were saved in the first year of use alone, and over three billion doses were supplied globally.

'Our efforts have been recognised by governments around the world, and are widely regarded as being a critical component of ending the global pandemic.

'As multiple, variant Covid vaccines have since been developed, there is a surplus of available updated vaccines.

'This has led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied. AstraZeneca has therefore taken the decision to initiate withdrawal of the marketing authorisations for Vaxzevria within Europe.

'We will now work with regulators and our partners to align on a clear path forward to conclude this chapter and significant contribution to the Covid pandemic.'

The withdrawal comes just months after it admitted in legal documents that its jab can cause the thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) reaction. It is also called vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).

Fifty-one families are currently pursuing legal action against AstraZeneca, arguing its 'defective' jab was to blame for their injuries and deaths of loved ones. 

If successful, lawyers say compensation could amount to upwards of £250million.

Yet under a legal indemnity ministers gave the company early in the pandemic, amid the race to get out of lockdown, it will be the British taxpayer that foots any legal bill.

Latest figures also show 168 Brits have now received state-funded financial support from the UK's Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. 

The scheme, set-up in the 70s, is a one-off payment, and people who get it are still entitled to take legal action against a vaccine manufacturer if they choose.

According to figures released by NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) under freedom of information laws, fewer than five of the VDPS claims were Pfizer and Moderna. AstraZeneca made up the rest.

The successful claims cover those affected by VITT. Others developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, anaphylaxis or suffered other blood clots.

More than 4,800 claims have been rejected.

Experts today insisted AstraZeneca's vaccine, credited with saving 6million lives, was still safe. 

Dr Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, said: 'It has been an excellent and vital vaccine, a key part of the pandemic response for most countries around the world. 

He added: 'The key reason for the withdrawal is likely to be that other Covid vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, are essentially better products. 

'AstraZeneca is very good, but the mRNA products — and probably Novavax too — are better.

'They have higher effectiveness and the mRNA platforms are more easily adapted towards the latest Covid variants. Thus, they form a key part of most countries' longer-term strategies.

'With that, orders for the AstraZeneca vaccine are probably much lower now than they were in previous years, so it's not worth a longer-term investment on the part of the manufacturers.'

Meanwhile, Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Government's vaccine advisory panel, at the University of Bristol, told the BBC the AstraZeneca was 'was what lifted us out of the catastrophe that was unfolding at the time' in combination with the Pfizer jab. 

It comes as Pfizer this week revealed it had paused its own trial of a drug for a rare muscle-wasting disease after a child died suddenly.

The boy, who was between two and four years old, suffered cardiac arrest after receiving the one-off gene therapy last year.

Pfizer has not determined exactly what happened or whether the death was caused by the treatment, called fordadistrogene movaparvovec.

The New York pharma giant said the pause would allow it to investigate the death 'while protecting the safety of the participants, which is our top priority.'