KEEP CALM, CARRY ON JABBING
UNDER 30s in the UK are to be offered a different Covid vaccine to AstraZeneca because of a ‘vanishingly small’ risk of blood clots, regulators said yesterday.
The change, which affects 10million people, comes after 79 people out of 20million vaccinated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab developed clots. Nineteen later died.
Dr June Raine, from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said 18 to 29-year-olds at the lowest risk from coronavirus should be offered an alternative vaccine ‘where available’.
But she added: ‘ The benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 and its associated risks – hospitalisation and death – continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people.’
Elle Taylor, 24, from Ammanford in Carmarthenshire, became the first person in the UK to be immunised with the US-made Moderna vaccine yesterday after the government ordered 17million doses.
England’s deputy chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam said, despite the ‘course correction’, the UK would still offer every adult a first vaccine dose by the end of July.
He said the NHS is ‘all over this’, and it remains ‘business as usual’.
Anyone who has received their first dose of the jab should continue to take their second dose as planned. ‘It will require some operational changes but
I’m assured the effect on the timing of the rollout programme should be zero or negligible if we get the supplies we expect,’ Prof Van-Tam said. EU regulators updated their own advice during a simultaneous briefing in Amsterdam. Dr Sabine Straus, of the European Medicines Authority (EMA), said: ‘The risk seems to be predominantly in younger ages and it also effects predominantly women. This vaccine is saving lives, and we need to use the vaccines we have to protect us from the devastating effects of Covid.’
The EMA said AstraZeneca should still be used for all age groups despite countries including France and Germany halting its use in the under-60s.
Another 272,020 vaccinations took place in the UK yesterday, with more than ten per cent of adults now having received two doses. Daily cases fell to 2,763 from 4,052 a week ago, but deaths rose from 43 to 45. Boris Johnson said the road map out of lockdown remains on course. ‘I don’t think anything that I have seen leads me to suppose that we will have to change the road map or deviate from the road map in any way,’ the prime minister added.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who has had a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, said it is ‘safe, effective and saving thousands of lives’.