Britons aged between 18 and 29 will be offered an alternative to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine where available, government advisors have decided
Britons aged between 18 and 29 will be offered an alternative to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine where available, government advisors have decided.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said that the new advice is a “course correction” for the “very successful” vaccine rollout for the UK.
The advice is being given following a total of 79 people in the UK who have had blood clots after receiving their first Oxford-AstraZeneca jab up to the 31st of March, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Dr June Raine, said.
This comes after a 24-year-old carer from Wales has become the first person in all of the UK to receive a dose of the Moderna vaccine as it has become the latest jab to be used as part the country’s coronavirus vaccination programme.
Of those people, 19 have sadly died, three of whom were under the age of 30, she had said. A total of 51 women and 28 men who were aged 18 to 79 had been affected.
“The risk is four people in a million,” Dr Raine added.
She said that anybody who was suffering the following side effects four days after receiving a vaccine should be seeking medical attention:
Blurred vision, headaches, chest pain, shortness of breath, swelling of the legs, abdominal pain, bruising or pinpoint spots beyond the vaccination site.
Currently, the UK has also been rolling out the Pfizer vaccine, and the first doses of the Moderna jab were administered in Wales today.
The decision that was made by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation comes following a review of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
At the weekend, it had been revealed that 30 people who have received the vaccine within the UK have developed a blood clot, out of the total 18.1 million people who have received a jab.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) confirmed that seven of those people had died as of the 24th of March.
This comes after 1.1 million people in private households in the UK have reported having long COVID, latest estimates show. The data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) defined the condition as symptoms that lasted more than four weeks and are self-reported, rather than clinically diagnosed.
This afternoon, The Prime Minister said that the government believes the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is “safe”, telling journalists on a visit to Cornwall: “But the crucial thing for everybody is to listen to what the scientists, the medical experts have to say later on today.”
On the vaccination programme, he added: “You can really start to see some of the benefits of that – it’s pretty clear that the decline in the number of deaths, the decline in the number of hospitalisations is being fuelled, is being assisted, the steepness of that decline is being helped by the roll-out of the vaccines so it’s very important for everybody to continue to get your second jab when you’re asked to come forward for your turn.”
This development comes as the EU’s medicines regulator has announced the conclusions for its own review, saying that “unusual blood clots” should be listed as being a “very rare” side-effect.
