By 30 rare blood clots found in people given the Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine
The medicine watchdog in the UK has said it has identified 30 cases of rare blood clots in people who have been given the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) insists the benefits of the jab outweigh any risks.
The cases in the UK that were reported to the regulator were out of over 18 million doses given up to, and including, 24 March.
Concerns over the blood clots, suspected to be associated with the vaccine, resulted in countries such as Germany, France and Canada halting the use of the jab.
The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has said that international regulators found the benefits of the jab outweighed the potential risk of blood clots.
The MHRA said that 22 reports of cerebral venous sinus thromboses (CVST) had been received, and eight reports of “other thrombosis events with low platelets” following the use of the AstraZeneca jab.
CVST occurs when a blood clot forms in the brain.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have also confirmed that the benefits associated with the vaccine outweigh any risks.
Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said that taking the vaccine was “by far the safest choice” to minimise the risks associated with Covid-19.
He said: “The extreme rarity of these events in the context of the many millions of vaccine doses that have been administered means that the risk-benefit decision facing people who are invited to receive Covid-19 vaccines is very straightforward: receiving the vaccine is by far the safest choice in terms of minimising individual risk of serious illness or death.”
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