Hancock seeking to reassure public
MATT HANCOCK and chief scientists are seeking to maintain public confidence in the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine after regulators pointed to a one in a million chance of dying from a rare blood clot.
The Health Secretary said everyone should take a vaccine when their time comes, and the risk of experiencing a brain clot was the same as “taking a long-haul flight”.
He urged the under-30s, who will be offered an alternative vaccine to AstraZeneca, to take a jab to protect loved ones and avoid the risk of long Covid, adding there were was “more than enough” Moderna and Pfizer for this age range.
In a round of broadcast interviews, Mr Hancock said vaccines are clearly breaking the link between Covid cases and deaths in the UK and were saving “thousands of lives”.
He told Sky News: “The number of people dying from Covid halved in the last nine days... and is down 90% from the peak.”
All vaccines in use in the UK were “safe for all ages”, but the “extremely rare” risk of suffering a rare brain blood clot, and the tipping of the balance of risk for the under30s,
means they could be given other jabs instead.
Speaking directly to younger people who may be thinking they do not need a vaccine, Mr Hancock said: “The vaccines are safe, and if you want to have the Pfizer vaccine or Moderna vaccine instead then that is fine.
“Covid is a horrible disease and long Covid affects people in their 20s just as much it seems as any other age group and can have debilitating side effects that essentially ruin your life.”
He added: “The safety system that we have around this vaccine is so sensitive that it can pick up events that are four in a million (the chance of developing a rare brain blood clot) – I’m told this is about the equivalent risk of taking a long-haul flight.”
Mr Hancock said there were almost 10.2 million people aged 18 to 29 in the UK, of whom 1.6 million have had their first vaccine.
Professor Jeremy Brown, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said that the benefit of vaccinating young people is not just preventing severe disease.
He told Sky News: “It actually will prevent them catching Covid, and if they don’t get Covid then the chance of developing so-called long Covid – the symptoms you get which many people get, about 10%, after they’ve had even a very mild infection – that will prevent that.
“It also allows younger people to visit their relatives who are elderly and more vulnerable to the disease, without the risk of infecting them.”
The Government said a further 53 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of yesterday, bringing the UK total to 126,980. It also said that, as of 9am yesterday, there had been a further 3,030 lab-confirmed cases in the UK.