Greek health workers face suspension; Moderna vaccines sent to Japan contained steel

Washington: Moderna said on Wednesday that tainted batches of its Covid-19 vaccine sent to Japan were contaminated with stainless steel particles, but the company did not expect it posed "an undue risk to patient safety."

The US biotech firm is facing major setbacks in Japan, with hundreds of thousands of doses suspended following reports of foreign substances detected in vials. Authorities are also investigating the deaths of two men who received doses from a tainted batch, but the cause of their deaths is so far unknown.

In a joint statement with its Japanese partner Takeda, Moderna said the contamination in one of three suspended lots had been traced back to production line flaws at a factory run by its Spanish contractor, ROVI Pharma Industrial Services.

"The rare presence of stainless steel particles in the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine does not pose an undue risk to patient safety and it does not adversely affect the benefit/risk profile of the product," the statement said.

Metallic particles of this size injected into a muscle may cause a site reaction, but are unlikely to go beyond that, it added. "Stainless steel is routinely used in heart valves, joint replacements and metal sutures and staples. As such, it is not expected that injection of the particles identified in these lots in Japan would result in increased medical risk."

Moderna added that for the time being, there was no evidence that the two deaths were related to administration of the vaccine and "the relationship is currently considered to be coincidental." An investigation is ongoing. Last week, Japan suspended 1.63 million Moderna doses across the country.

Around 46 percent of Japan’s population has been fully vaccinated, as the country battles a record surge of coronavirus cases driven by the more contagious Delta variant. Some 16,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Japan, and large parts of the country are under strict virus restrictions.

Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 10,337 within one day to 4,100,138, with the death toll adding by 653 to 133,676, the country's Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

According to the ministry, 16,394 more people were discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of patients recovering from Covid-19 to 3,776,891. To date, at least 36.34 million people in the country have received two shots of vaccines, while 63.94 million have taken the first doses, the ministry added. Indonesia is targeting to vaccinate 208.2 million people.

Meantime, some 10,000 health workers in Greece faced being suspended as a deadline to get vaccinated against Covid-19 ran out on Wednesday, a union said. From September 1, inoculations become mandatory for health workers, and those who don’t comply will not be allowed to work.

Protests broke out on Wednesday morning in front of hospitals throughout the country to oppose compulsory vaccinations and to highlight the consequences of mass dismissals on the country’s health services.

According to estimates by the National Federation of Public Hospital Workers, some 10,000 health workers, or 10 percent of the workforce, had not been jabbed by Wednesday. More specifically, the ambulance service will have to work with 1,245 less personnel, financial newspaper Naftemporiki reported.

"We are pushing health workers to be vaccinated, but we are against compulsory vaccination, which poses a democratic problem," Dimitris Kourouvalakis, a member of the executive committee of the federation, told AFP.

The federation has called for a strike on Thursday morning, and protests in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece’s second biggest city. Health Minister Athanassios Plevris said Wednesday that the legislation bringing in mandatory vaccinations, which was voted in July, "will be implemented."

The government is now trying to find measures to fill the gaps, such as suspending holidays for health workers who have been vaccinated, to ensure that services are fully operational. In a related development, Austria on Wednesday said it was probing the leak of 24,000 names and addresses of people who tested positive for coronavirus this year in the western province of Tyrol.

The list, which includes people’s names, dates of birth, addresses and other data, was leaked to the public broadcaster ORF and the daily Der Standard, according to the Austrian Data Protection Authority, which has started a probe.—AFP/Xinhua