The Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine will be withdrawn worldwide just months after the firm admitted that the jab causes a rare but dangerous side effect, however, AstraZeneca insists that the decision to pull the vaccine was purely made for commercial reasons.

AstraZeneca pulled its "marketing authorisation" for its COVID-19 vaccine, known commercially as Vaxzevria, in the European Union on Tuesday and plans to do so in the UK and other countries where it was deployed in the coming months. The decision will not impact the United States, where the jab never received approval to go to market.

The pharmaceutical giant insisted that the decision was made for commercial considerations, saying that the vaccine is no longer being manufactured and that more recent vaccines have been developed to confront novel variants of the Chinese virus.