The decision by more than a dozen European countries to suspend AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot faced deepening scrutiny on Wednesday, amid concerns that the step could undermine public confidence and delay efforts to beat the pandemic. However, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that its experts were still reviewing safety data on the AstraZeneca vaccine but recommended that injection programmes continue.
While millions of doses of the vaccine have been administered, concerns arose after small numbers of people developed blood clots, prompting countries, including the EU’s three largest nations, Germany, France and Italy, to suspend injections.
“The WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety is carefully assessing the latest available safety data,” the UN health agency said in a statement. “At this time, WHO considers that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh its risks and recommends that vaccinations continue.”
It said that once the committee had completed its review, the WHO would immediately communicate its findings.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca Plc said that it had conducted a review covering more than 17 million people who had received its shots in the EU and Britain, and had found no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
The EU drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is also investigating reports of around 30 cases of blood clots—termed thromboembolic events—and bleeding and low platelet counts among the 5 million people in the EU that have received the AstraZeneca vaccine. It will present its findings on
Thursday, but meanwhile it has found no causal link to the vaccine, and also said that the shot’s benefits clearly outweigh any risks.
“Vaccination against Covid-19 will not reduce illness or deaths from other causes. Thromboembolic events are known to occur frequently. Venous thromboembolism is the third most common cardiovascular disease globally,” stated the WHO.
The WHO also assured that it was in regular contact with the EU’s European Medicines Agency and regulators around the world for the latest information on Covid-19 vaccine safety, and called on countries not to delay lifesaving vaccine programmes.
The WHO further said that in mass vaccination campaigns, it was routine for countries to flag up potential adverse events after people have been immunised. “This does not necessarily mean that the events are linked to vaccination itself, but it is good practice to investigate them. It also shows that the surveillance system works and that effective controls are in place,” it said.
Germany acted after its vaccine oversight body, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, found seven cases of a very rare cerebral vein clot among 1.6 million people given the AstraZeneca shot in the country, including three cases that were fatal. Health Minister Jens Spahn claimed that he acted on expert advice after Germany’s vaccine watchdog reported on ‘a statistically significant number’ of cases of the rare brain blood clot.
However, the role of Germany, and in particular Spahn, has been interpreted as political both at home and abroad, especially after a chaotic round of telephone diplomacy at the start of the week ended with the EU’s biggest states agreeing to put AstraZeneca on hold.
Several opposition leaders are calling on Chancellor Angela Merkel to sack Spahn.
Experts now fear that the stop on AstraZeneca threatens to hobble Europe’s vaccination campaign, which has already lagged far behind the United States and former EU member Britain, just as a third wave of infection breaks over the continent, accelerated by more infectious variants.
“We need this vaccine,” said Germany’s best-known virologist Christian Drosten, and cited forecasts of resurgence in the infection by Easter that could endanger Germans over the age of 60 who are next in line for a shot.
“We are worried that there may be an effect on the trust of the vaccines,” EMA head Emer Cooke told reporters. “But our job is to make sure that the products that we authorise are safe and can be trusted.”
A narrow majority of Germans already believe that it was right for the government to suspend AstraZeneca, a Forsa opinion poll showed on Wednesday, with 54% backing Spahn’s decision and 39% saying it was excessive. The willingness of Germans to be vaccinated against Covid, at 71%, meanwhile, has also fallen by two percentage points since Forsa’s last poll on March 3. Were AstraZeneca to be reinstated, 63% would be willing to take it, the poll reported.
Ian Jones, a professor of virology at Britain’s Reading University, said the blood clot issue had “been picked up by politicians who don’t know one side of a virus from another”. “It’s like falling dominoes. You just need one or two (countries) to state there’s a problem and suspend use, and then a whole lot of others will fall in place. I don’t think there have been any independent decisions,” he told Reuters.