The United Kingdom, in June 2020, ordered 100 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
The British medical authority said on Saturday that of the 30 people who suffered rare blood clots after receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, seven died.
The British recognition of the death comes at a time when several European countries have stopped using the AstraZeneca jab in connection with a possible blood clot.
The UK Medicines and Medicines Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said in a statement that “Of the 30 reports up to and including 24 March, unfortunately, 7 died”.
Reports of thrombosis, submitted by doctors or the public through a government website, came after 18.1 million doses of the vaccine were administered in the country.
Most cases (22) were a rare coagulation condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. In eight cases, people suffered from other types of thrombosis, combined with low levels of platelets in the blood, which help blood clots form.
There have been no reports of blood clots in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the UK regulator said, adding that “our in-depth review of these reports is ongoing”.
But the MHRA’s executive director, Dr. June Raine, stressed that the benefits far outweighed any risks. “The public should continue their vaccine when asked to do so,” she said.
Europe is expected to be updated
Both the MHRA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) say that no causal link has yet been established between the blood clotting case and the AstraZeneca vaccine.
But growing concerns have led a number of countries to stop vaccinating or limiting it to the elderly because of the relatively young age of those who have suffered blood clots.
The Netherlands stopped vaccinating AstraZeneca for people under the age of 60 on Friday, after five new cases among younger women, one of whom died.
Germany has suspended vaccine use for those under 60 after 31 cases of blood clots, most of them among younger and middle-aged women.
A number of other countries, including France, have imposed similar age restrictions, while Denmark and Norway have suspended any use of the vaccine.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which, like the World Health Organization, previously declared the AstraZeneca vaccine safe, is expected to announce updated advice on the subject on 7 April.
He said on Wednesday that there had been 62 cases of worldwide cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, 44 of them in the European Economic Area, which includes the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
However, this figure did not include all cases in Germany.
More than 9.2 million AstraZeneca jabs have been administered in the region.
The EMA said it believed the vaccine was safe and that experts found no specific risk factors, such as age, gender or medical history.
“Weight of evidence”
Paul Hunter, a medical microbiologist at the British University of East Anglia, told AFP that he initially believed the link between vaccination and blood clots could be a “random association”.
As evidence accumulates in clusters in separate countries, “the weight of evidence is now shifting to Oxford-AstraZeneca, which is actually the cause of these adverse events,” he said.
However, the risk for those not vaccinated to die of Covid is “substantially higher,” he said.
An AstraZeneca spokeswoman told AFP that patient safety is “the highest priority”.
Regulators in the UK, the EU and the World Health Organization have concluded that the benefits “significantly outweigh the risks for all age groups of adults,” she said.
AstraZeneca said last month following efficacy studies in the US that its vaccine is 76% effective in preventing the disease. He also said that data for the EU and the UK did not show an increased risk of blood clots.
The UK has administered more than 31 million primary doses of the vaccine, using both Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech fists. People cannot choose which one they receive.
The United Kingdom, in June 2020, ordered 100 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and supported its development. It also ordered 30 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the same year.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is published in a syndicated stream.)