UK regulator ‘considering stopping Oxford vaccine roll-out in under-30s’
The roll-out of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK could potentially be stopped for younger adults amid fears it could be linked to a rare type of blood clot.
Channel 4 News reported that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was considering proposals to restrict the use of that specific vaccine in younger people.
They said that a decision could be made as early as tomorrow, April 6.
MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said: ‘People should continue to get their vaccine when invited to do so.
‘Our thorough and detailed review is ongoing into reports of very rare and specific types of blood clots with low platelets following the Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca.
‘No decision has yet been made on any regulatory action.’
Earlier today, ‘Professor Lockdown’ Neil Ferguson, a former member of government advisory group SAGE, said the development of blood clots in people who had been given the vaccine raised fresh questions over whether young people should be given a jab.
He told Today: ‘In terms of the data at the moment, there is increasing evidence that there is a rare risk associated, particularly with the AstraZeneca vaccine but it may be associated at a lower level with other vaccines, of these unusual blood clots with low platelet counts.
‘It appears that risk is age related, it may possible be – but the data is weaker on this – related to sex.
‘And so the older you are, the less the risk is and also the higher the risk is of Covid so the risk-benefit equation really points very much towards being vaccinated.
‘I think it becomes slightly more complicated when you get to younger age groups where the risk-benefit equation is more complicated.’
Prof Ferguson said the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) were ‘considering this matter very urgently’ but added: ‘No vaccine, no medicine is risk free – it is always about a balancing equation against risk.’
Channel 4 News reported that a decision could see younger people offered a different type of vaccine – and stressed that the MHRA had not yet taken a position on the issue.
On Friday, the organisation said it had identified 30 cases of rare blood clot events – with seven deaths – out of 18.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab administered up to and including March 24 in the UK.
They included 22 reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) – which stops blood draining from the brain properly – and eight of other thrombosis events with low platelets.
It comes as several European countries reviewed their roll-out of the vaccine.
The Netherlands followed Germany in becoming the latest country to suspend the AstraZeneca jab for people aged under 60 due to fears of a link with rare blood clots.
Professor Paul Hunter, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, said the appearance of ‘clusters’ of rare clots among people who had had the AstraZenca jab in different countries increasingly suggested it was not a ‘random association’.
‘It is not uncommon to get clusters of rare events purely by chance,’ he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
‘But once you find that cluster in one population and it then crops up in another – such as previously in the German and now in the English – then I think the chances of that being a random association is very, very low.
‘Clearly more work needs to be done, but I think the evidence is shifting more towards it being causally related at the moment.’
However, he said the risks associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine were still very low compared to the risks of not getting the jab.
‘The chance of dying if you don’t have the vaccine is many times greater than the risk of dying from CVT after the AstraZeneca vaccine, even if it does turn out, as I suspect it will, that this link is causal,’ he said.
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