Vaccine safety experts to review Oxford-AstraZeneca jab after several European countries halt roll-outs

Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine
PA Wire
Leah Sinclair16 March 2021

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is urging countries to continue using the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine as global medical leaders meet to discuss its safety after several European countries halted their rollouts over blood clot fears.

Germany, France, Spain and Italy are among the countries that have paused injections of the vaccine amid concerns about blood clots in people who have had the shot, although the European Union’s medical regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), insisted its benefits outweighed the risk of side effects.

WHO’s global advisory committee on vaccine safety will hold a meeting on Tuesday, while the EMA will also meet, with a view to publishing further guidance on Thursday.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist, told a media briefing “we do not want people to panic”, as she said no association has been found so far between blood clots and Covid-19 vaccines.

She said the rates at which blood clots have occurred in people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine “are in fact less than what you would expect in the general population”.

Germany said it was suspending use of the vaccine after the national regulator advised that reports of blood clots should be investigated, while Spanish health minister Carolina Darias announced a two-week halt on using the jab.

The Italian medicines authority AIFA said it was taking the decision as a “precautionary and temporary measure” pending rulings by the EMA.

The announcements on Monday came after Ireland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland already moved to suspend the jab following blot-clotting issues, some of them fatal, in people who had used it.

The Netherlands said on Monday it had seen 10 cases of possible noteworthy adverse side-effects from the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Denmark has reported “highly unusual” symptoms in a 60-year-old citizen who died from a blood clot after receiving the vaccine, the same phrase used on Saturday by Norway about three people under the age of 50 it said were being treated in hospital.

Iceland and Bulgaria had earlier suspended its use while Austria, along with Italy, have stopped using particular batches.

Despite this, the WHO, AstraZeneca, and the EMA have insisted the jab is safe, and that there is no link between the vaccine and reported blood clots.

The EMA said “many thousands of people” develop blood clots every year in the EU and “the number of thromboembolic events overall in vaccinated people seems not to be higher than that seen in the general population”.

According to AstraZeneca, about 17 million people in the EU and the UK have received a dose of the vaccine, with fewer than 40 cases of blood clots reported to date.

Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, said the decision to pause rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab could be a “disaster” for Covid-19 vaccine uptake in Europe.

Asked what he would say to those in the UK who are booked to receive the vaccine, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I really wouldn’t be worried at the present time.

“I think it is very clear that the benefits of being vaccinated at the moment so far outweigh the possible concern over this rather rare type of blood clot.

“It really is a completely one-sided argument statistically that we need to be vaccinating.

“I think it is a disaster for the vaccination uptake in Europe, which is already on slightly unsteady ground in some countries.”

It comes as UK experts predict a surge in the number of people being offered Covid vaccinations in the coming days.

The number of shots given is expected to reach 4 million this week - nearly double what has been delivered per week recently, NHS sources say.

It would put the NHS rollout two weeks ahead of schedule and mean all over 50s will have been given at least one dose by the end of the month.

This increase has been made possible due to a large shipment of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute in India, which has arrived and passed safety checks.

Vaccination teams are now working their way through the priority list of people in their 50s and younger adults with a disability.

Once this is completed, all nine of the priority groups in the first phase of the Government’s vaccination programme will have received a dose of the vaccine.

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