Despite the vaccine being discontinued in many European countries due to news of a small number of blood clots, Dr. Bonnie Henry of Canada told the public that the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is safe.
Canada says AstraZeneca vaccine is safe
On Tuesday, AstraZeneca delivered 68,000 doses of B.C., which will be used in a related program to immunize front-line staff in sectors where COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred, such as food processing plants and agricultural sites. In B.C., the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are being used to vaccinate the general population, beginning this month with seniors 80 and older and Indigenous people 65 and older.
Henry, the regional health officer for B.C., said she's been paying careful attention to news that two individuals in Europe died soon after getting the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Henry met with Health Canada officials on Thursday to address the situation and reassure the public that the vaccine is safe, Vancouver Sun reported.
"We are keeping a close eye on this," she said on Thursday. Investigations of adverse effects are "unexpected when a new medication, a new vaccine is used on a significant number of people," she added.
Bonnie pointed out that AstraZeneca has immunized tens of millions of citizens in the United Kingdom and that "the same protective signs have not occurred there."
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While the European Medicines Agency stated that there is no evidence linking the vaccine to an elevated risk of blood clots, health officials in at least nine European countries, including Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, halted the use of AstraZeneca's doses on Thursday - some completely, some only on small batches - pending further investigation.
According to the CDC, 30 blood clots occurred in more than five million people who received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, two of which were fatal. This is in line with the average occurrence of blood clots in the general population.
The federal government has put an order for 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, of which 1.9 million will be distributed by COVAX, an international initiative aimed at providing universal access to vaccines. Despite ordering more COVID-19 vaccine doses per capita than any other nation, Canada's initial rollout has been weak, in part due to temporary delivery delays from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc, as per Reuters via Yahoo.
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Halting AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine rollout in EU
According to one leading Australian doctor, the European authorities' decision to halt the introduction of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after a small number of people developed blood clots is a "overreaction."
"You can't ignore these incidents," Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases expert at ANU, said, "but I think it's an overreaction." He said that in the general population, blood clots occur at a rate of about 100 per 100,000 and that the rate of blood clots in people who got the AstraZeneca vaccine did not seem to be any greater.
Professor Collignon explained that certain patients would have health problems that aren't directly related to the vaccine with any public vaccination campaign. He added no sign of increased blood clots in the phase 3 trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
According to ABC.net, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) stated that the AstraZeneca vaccine benefits appear to outweigh the risks. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) recorded 30 cases of clot-related incidents among the 5 million Europeans who got the vaccine.
After receiving doses from a specific batch of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, one person in Austria died of blood clots, and another was hospitalized with a lung blockage. Denmark halted the shoots for two weeks after a 60-year-old woman died from a blood clot after receiving an AstraZeneca shot from a sample used in Austria.
As a precautionary measure, several EU countries postponed this batch while the EMA conducted a full investigation. When two men died in Sicily, Italy also stopped using AstraZeneca, but those shots were not from the Austrian batch. Immunizations of the vaccine have also been suspended in Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and Latvia as investigations proceed.
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