Germany has followed Canada in limiting its rollout of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine for those under the age of 60. Earlier today, Canada suspended its use of the jab for people under 55. Germany has now suspended its rollout of the vaccine for those under the age of 60 due to concerns that it might be linked to rare blood clots. BBC News has the story.
Germany is suspending routine use of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine for people aged below 60 because of a risk of rare blood clots.
The German medicines regulator found 31 cases of a type of rare blood clot among the nearly 2.7 million people who had received the vaccine in Germany.
Canada earlier 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 said it was continuing 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.
Earlier this month, the European Medicines Agency said the AZ Covid vaccine is “safe and effective” to use, but highlighted that it “cannot rule out definitively” a link to a rare clotting disorder.
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I am lucky, I don’t know anyone who has been seriously ill with c19, in fact I only know 9 people who have had it and five of them are in the same family and the other four work together!!
Sadly one of the older members of the family who got c19 in October and had four days in bed with it was pursuaded he needed the jab. He had the astra one, two weeks later he’s on a ventilator having developed myasthenia gravis and being in crisis. His GP said it was probably due to his bout of covid, nothing to do with the jab. Luckily his hospital consultant has more integrity and has submitted a yellow card detailing an adverse reaction.
I wonder how many adverse reactions are not being reported?
They say its between 1% and 10% based on some US studies regarding VAERS. Doctors will certainly be reluctant to report.
I’ve read the paper from the Paul Ehrlich institute. There seems to be a common pattern of thrombosis, with 21 cases of cerebral venous thrombosis (9 fatal) associated with PF4 (Platelet) antibodies casing thrombocytopenia mainly in young women. This certainly warrants further study and I can well see why countries would pause the vaccination of young people until the situation is clarified. The risk is very small – estimated at about 1:100,000, but if you are vaccinating ten million young people that’s 100 cases and maybe 50 fatalities. It may be that Covid would kill more than 50 young people in 10 million, but that is irrelevant. A government can’t be seen to have their vaccination programme killing people.
The CDC has updated their IFR estimates 10 days ago: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html 18-49 year old: 500 per million, or 0.05%. They are probably still overestimating it; plus, in any case, in US IFRs for younger and middle-aged are somewhat higher than in Europe (just like the ‘natural’ mortality). In any case, let’s take it at face value. Also from official numbers, the majority of ~20-50 group that died had at least 1 comorbidity (about 9 out of 10). The IFR for ~20-50 healthy (no comorbidity) is about order of magnitude smaller: 50 per million or 0.005%. When Germany administered 2.1 million doses, 7 deaths were reported: https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1375838791282405383 so: 3.5 per million. When Norway administered 130 thousand doses, 3 deaths were reported: https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1375838412779950083 so: 23 per million. With these numbers, for healthy ~20-50 age group the benefit/risk is marginal. Then there are several other things to consider: -there may be unreported deaths from vaccine from this specific cause; -the reported vaccine doses are total, not just that went to 20-50 healthy. What is needed is the number of doses that went specifically to 20-50 heathy. It is for sure smaller than total (by how much?), so the risk from vaccine is higher… Read more »