No evidence AstraZeneca vaccine causes greater blood clot risk, says company

AstraZeneca said Sunday that a safety review has no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine poses an increased risk of blood clots, after several countries suspended the use of the shots earlier this week.

The company said it was conducting a “careful investigation” of safety data after Denmark stopped rolling out the AstraZeneca jab on Thursday after a 60-year-old woman who received the shot suffered a blood clot and died. Authorities in Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands and Ireland quickly followed up while the investigation was ongoing, saying the moves were preventative and that there was no evidence of any connection.

However, the drugmaker on Sunday tried to allay fears after analyzing the data of the 17 million people who had already received the vaccine.

A comprehensive review of all available safety data from over 17 million people vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccine in the European Union and the United Kingdom, AstraZeneca showed no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia, at any defined age. group, gender, group or in any particular country, ”the company said in a statement.

The AstraZeneca shot has not yet been approved for use in the United States, but the company plans to submit an emergency use authorization in the coming weeks, Reuters reports.

AstraZeneca chief medical officer Ann Taylor added that the number of blood clots reported among the 17 million people who received the vaccine was ‘lower than the hundreds of cases that would be expected among the general population’. There were 15 incidents of deep vein thrombosis and 22 cases of pulmonary embolism in the group, ‘much lower than would naturally be expected’, the company added.

“The nature of the pandemic has led to greater attention in individual cases and we go beyond the standard practices for safety monitoring of licensed medicines in the notification of vaccines to ensure public safety,” Taylor said in a statement.

The remarks were reiterated earlier this week by the European Medicines Agency, which said there was currently no indication of a link between the vaccine and blood clots, and that the benefits of the jab outweighed any risks.

“The position of the EMA’s safety committee … is that the benefits of the vaccine still outweigh the risks and that the vaccine can still be administered while investigating cases of thromboembolic events,” the agency said.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has struggled with a series of PR setbacks during the testing and rollout phase. Clinical trials have shown that it has a lower effectiveness than other leading vaccines, namely the Moderna and Pfizer shots, but it is very effective in preventing serious diseases and deaths in people contracting COVID-19.

Yet, in some countries, hundreds of thousands of doses have been left unopened in recent weeks.