Europe’s medical regulator said Thursday the AstraZeneca vaccine is “safe and effective” and not associated with a higher blood clot risk, after more than a dozen countries paused rollouts over health fears.
The closely-watched announcement comes after the WHO and Britain’s health watchdog both said the vaccine was safe, adding that it was far riskier to not get the shot as several countries face a worrying rise in coronavirus cases.
“The committee has come to a clear scientific conclusion: this is a safe and effective vaccine,” European Medicines Agency (EMA) chief Emer Cooke said Thursday after a probe by the body’s safety committee.
“The committee also concluded that the vaccine is not associated with an increase in the overall risk of thromboembolic events or blood clots,” she added.
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However, the agency “cannot rule out definitively” a link to a rare clotting disorder.
The UK health regulator on Thursday also said there were no links between blood clots and the AstraZeneca jab, or the Pfizer vaccine.
“There is no evidence that blood clots in veins is occurring more than would be expected in the absence of vaccination, for either vaccine,” said June Raine, chief executive of the Independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
And the World Health Organization (WHO) said again Thursday it was better to take the AstraZeneca vaccine than not, after saying it was looking into available data on the shot.
The head of WHO Africa said Thursday she hoped the controversy surrounding the British-Swedish jab would not deter people from getting the vaccine on the continent, where more than 16 million vaccine doses, mostly AstraZeneca, have been distributed under the Covax scheme.
“A lot of countries have doubts” about AstraZeneca, Matshidiso Moeti told reporters.
“But we hope that will not create doubts around anti-Covid vaccines in general.”
AFP
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