SYRACUSE - After deaths were reported throughout Europe last week of people who had just received the AstraZeneca vaccination, and the European Medicine Agency’s subsequent analysis of the vaccine and guarantee that it is safe, most European countries have now resumed administering AstraZeneca doses and are back on track with their vaccinations.

  However, Italy seems to be the only European country still suffering the fallout of these deaths as it has been revealed that 20 percent of Italy’s AstraZeneca shots have been impounded for the sake of Carabinieri investigations. 

  An investigation into one of the deaths in Syracuse, Sicily, which also saw two doctors and a nurse placed under investigation for manslaughter, has ordered tens of thousands of doses of the specific batch of the vaccine to be sequestered. 

  The chief prosecutor of this case, Gaetano Bono, has come under a lot of fire for this decision given the current state of the Italian and European vaccination campaigns and the national shortage of doses.

  Though Bono has said that it is a purely precautionary measure, and that he himself had full faith in the vaccine, stressing that he and most of his colleagues within the prosecution had received it, his move has caused much ire among medical professionals. 

  A separate investigation, led by prosecutor Teresa Angela Camelio, into another of the deaths in Biella has impounded 393,600 doses of the batch in question to see if the vaccines were spoiled in anyway.

  “How can we be expected to vaccinate millions of people in these conditions?” said Massimo Galli, head of the infectious diseases department of Milan’s Sacco Hospital. “The medics that I know are absolutely furious about this absurd situation.”

  “In any other country in the European Union, this would not be considered manslaughter,” said Dr. Frank Montgomery, the World Medicine Agency’s council chairperson. “Possible side-effects from a vaccination would never lead to the prosecution of a doctor.”

  The vaccines that have been sequestered expire after six months. The prosecution has yet to say how long they plan to hold back these doses for their investigation.

  In the wake of the investigations into doctors and nurses who had administered the shots, medical unions have argued for legal protection for doctors involved in vaccinations, something that the Health Minister himself, Roberto Speranza, has said is a good idea.

  “This is a simple intramuscular injection. You cannot be held responsible for any possible side effects,” said Carlo Palermo, head of the doctors’ union ANAAO-ASSOMED. “Can you imagine the negative personal repercussions for every doctor caught up like this? They have to find a lawyer, a technician to attend the autopsy ... It is very disturbing.”

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