Germany puts restrictions on AstraZeneca use
BERLIN – German health officials agreed to restrict the use of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in people under 60, amid fresh concern over unusual blood clots reported from those who received the shots.
Health Minister Jens Spahn and state officials agreed unanimously Tuesday to only give the vaccine to people aged 60 or older, unless they belong to a high-risk category for serious illness from COVID-19 and have agreed with their doctor to take the vaccine despite the small risk of a serious side-effect.
The move follows the recommendations of Germany’s independent vaccine expert panel and comes after the country’s medical regulator released new data showing that a total of 31 unusual blood clots, including nine deaths, were reported by March 29 out of some 2.7 million doses of AstraZeneca administered in Germany.
The news is a further blow to the vaccine, which is critical to Europe’s immunization campaign and a linchpin in the global strategy to get shots to poorer countries. It comes less than two weeks after the EU drug regulator said the vaccine does not increase the overall incidence of blood clots following a similar scare. The European Medicines Agency said at the time that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risk, but it could not rule out a link between the shot and some unusual kinds of clots and recommended adding a warning about possible rare side-effects.
Authorities in Berlin, Munich, Brandenburg state and the country’s biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, made the decision to temporarily halt vaccinations for younger people after the country’s medical regulator said it had received additional reports of an unusual form of blood clot in the head, known as sinus vein thrombosis, in recent recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine. All together, those areas are home to almost a third of the German population.
Use of the AstraZeneca vaccine was temporarily halted in several European countries earlier this month over concerns about the rare blood clots. After a review by medical experts at the European Medicines Agency, most European Union countries, including Germany, resumed use of the vaccine on March 19.