Canada, German cities suspend AstraZeneca vax for under 55, 60

Toronto/ Berlin: Canada on Monday suspended the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Coronavirus vaccine for people under age 55 following concerns it might be linked to rare blood clots.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization had recommended the pause for safety reasons and the Canadian provinces, which administer health in the country, announced the suspension Monday. There is substantial uncertainty about the benefit of providing AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines to adults under 55 given the potential risks, said Dr. Shelley Deeks, vice chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.

Deeks said the updated recommendations come amid new data from Europe that suggests the risk of blood clots is now potentially as high as one in 100,000, much higher than the one in one million risk believed before.

She said most of the patients in Europe who developed a rare blood clot after vaccination with AstraZeneca were women under age 55, and the fatality rate among those who develop clots is as high as 40 per cent.

Dr. Joss Reimer of Manitoba's Vaccine Implementation Task Force said despite the finding that there was no increase risk of blood clots overall related to AstraZeneca in Europe, a rare but very serious side effect has been seen primarily in young women in Europe.

The AstraZeneca shot, which has been authorized in more than 70 countries, is a pillar of a U.N.-backed project known as COVAX that aims to get COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries. It has also become a key tool in European countries' efforts to boost their sluggish vaccine rollouts. That makes doubts about the shots especially worrying.

Meanwhile, several health authorities in Germany announced Tuesday that they are again suspending the use of AstraZeneca's Coronavirus vaccine for residents under age 60 amid fresh reports of unusual blood clots in people who recently received the shots.

Officials in Berlin, Munich and the eastern state of Brandenburg took the decision to temporarily halt vaccinations ahead of a meeting later Tuesday of representatives from Germany's 16 states. The country's medical regulator said it had received a total of 31 reports of rare blood clots in recent recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine by March 29. Nine of the people died and all but two of the cases involved women aged 20 to 63, the Paul Ehrlich Institute said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her health minister, Jens Spahn, planned to hold a news conference late Tuesday on the outcome of their meeting with the states. Reports of an unusual form of blood clot in the head, known as sinus vein thrombosis, prompted several European countries to temporarily halt the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this month. After a review by medical experts, the European Medicines Agency concluded the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks.