Italy launches manslaughter investigation into AstraZeneca vaccine as music teacher died hours after getting the vaccine jab

The safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine gets into a precarious situation on Tuesday as Italian launches a manslaughter investigation into AstraZeneca after law-enforcement authorities in Sicily and Piedmont seized batches of the AstraZeneca COVID jab.

According to Italian-language media Ansa, Italian prosecutors in the EU’s third-largest economy have launched a manslaughter investigation after a 57-year-old music teacher Sandro Tognatti died just hours after receiving the jab in his hometown of Biella on Saturday afternoon.

Sandro Tognatti

His wife, Simona Riussi, told the Italian press that her husband later developed a high fever after getting the vaccine but went to bed anyway. The next morning, Riussi awoke to find Tognatti dead. She called an ambulance, but Tognatti was already dead.

Now, prosecutors in Piedmont officially launched the investigation later in the day. So far, Italian prosecutors have seized a batch with nearly 400K jabs in it. As we reported yesterday, more European countries halt the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine following new reports of increased blood clot side effects.

So far, Italian authorities have documented at least 15 cases of blood clots and 22 cases of pulmonary embolis among the more than 11M Italians who have already been vaccinated.

Meanwhile, the vaccine manufacturer and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) insisted the vaccine was safe. However, EMA said they’re going to reexamine data related to blood clots in patients who received the vaccine as Germany sees increased blood-clot risk.

A number of other EU nations including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain have also halted the use of AstraZeneca vaccine after a 49-year-old woman in Austria died of multiple thrombosis.

Below is a full list of countries that are currently not using the AstraZeneca vaccine:

• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Ireland
• Iceland
• Denmark
• Norway
• Bulgaria
• Luxembourg
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Austria
• Romania
• Thailand
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Indonesia