Covid: German regions restrict use of AstraZeneca jab
The German cities of Berlin and Munich have halted use of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in people below the age of 60 because of reports of blood clots.
German national and state health officials are to discuss the issue on Tuesday after further cases of a type of rare clot came to light.
Canada has also suspended use of the AstraZeneca jab in people under 55.
AstraZeneca said international regulators had found the benefits of its jab outweighed risks significantly.
It continued, it said, to analyse its database to understand “whether these very rare cases of blood clots associated with thrombocytopenia occur any more commonly than would be expected naturally in a population of millions of people”.
“We will continue to work with German authorities to address any questions they may have,” it added.
The EU and UK medicine regulators both backed the vaccine after previous cautionary suspensions in Europe this month.
Both the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the UK Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency stressed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine continued to outweigh the risk of side effects.
AstraZeneca’s product is one of the most widely used coronavirus vaccines in the West, and is meant to be supplied on a not-for-profit basis to the developing world.
The EU’s rollout of its vaccination programme has been dogged by delays because of delivery and production problems, and Germany is among states now fearing a third wave of infections.
On Tuesday, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi and his wife, who are both 73, received their first doses of AstraZeneca in a display of confidence in the vaccine.
If you give a vaccine to millions of people you will of course see some cases of people falling seriously ill or even dying shortly afterwards. It does not mean the vaccine has caused the problem – it could have occurred naturally. What authorities have to work out is whether it is cause or coincidence.
They do this by monitoring adverse events after vaccination and see if they are above what you would normally expect. The type of blood clot that has been seen is very rare and so it is hard to know exactly how many cases you would normally expect to see. We do know it is more common in women and taking the pill increases the risk of it happening.
There is no evidence yet to prove the AstraZeneca vaccine increases the chances of these clots. But, even if it does, the next thing you have to take into account is whether Covid presents more of a danger.
Regulators in Europe and the UK are clear – given the current evidence – that use of the vaccine should continue in all ages.