Britons under 40 will be offered an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine due to its link to rare blood clots, health officials announced today.
Advisers made the recommendation today after more adults suffered the potentially-fatal clotting disorder in the past week.
The absolute risk of the clots is still small, affecting around one in 100,000 people given the British-made jab. But they are occurring more in younger adults, with a rate of around one in 60,000 under-40s.
Experts say the infection rate in the UK is so low now that the risk of the clots outweigh that of Covid in younger adults. They will be given either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines instead.
Anyone, no matter what age, who has been given their first dose of AstraZeneca is being urged to come forward for their second.
It was previously recommended on April 7 that those under 30 with no underlying health conditions should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca.
The UK is understood to have enough supplies of other vaccines to offer all adults a first dose by the Government’s July 31 target.
Britons under 40 will be offered an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine due to its link to rare blood clots, health officials announced today
The UK has enough supplies on order to vaccinate the entire population many times over
The latest figures from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) show there have been 10.5 cases of blood clots combined with low platelet counts per million doses. But in those between age 30 and 39, the risk is higher at 17.4 per million.
There have been 242 cases of the rare clotting disorder following the Oxford jab up to April 28, with more than 28million doses now administered.
Six out of 5.9million people who received a second injection developed the rare combination, a rate of around one in a million.
A total of 49 patients have died after getting the vaccine, giving it an overall fatality rate of 2.1 per million, rising to 4.5 per million in under-40s.
In a televised press conference announcing the move, MHRA chief Dr June Raine said the benefits of the vaccine clearly outweighed the risks for elderly adults but the ratio was ‘more finely balanced’ for younger people.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has been analysing the data and drafted its recommendation earlier this week.
Professor Lim Wei Shen, head of the JCVI, said the decision was only able to be made because the UK’s Covid situation is stable.
He said good control of infections, plenty supplies of vaccines and high level of vaccine uptake meant to cautious recommendation could be made.
If any of these three things were to go awry then the decision could be reversed, he added.
The clots occurred in 141 women and 100 men aged from 18 to 93, and the overall case death rate was 20 per cent.
A particular type of brain blood clot – cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) – was reported in 93 cases with an average age of 47.
The 149 had a rare combination of blood clots and low platelet counts, with an average age of 55.
The MHRA and JCVI have both said that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine continue to ‘outweigh the risks for the vast majority of adults’.
Experts have also assessed the risks from any third wave of Covid in the UK and concluded that that wave is likely to be smaller than previously anticipated.
It came as an expert source said they anticipate approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the UK shortly.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is currently appraising the jab and the review is said to be at an advanced stage.
MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said: ‘Public safety is always at the forefront of our minds and we take every report seriously.
‘Our position remains that the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca against Covid-19, with its associated risk of hospitalisation and death, continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people.
‘The balance of benefits and risks is very favourable for older people but is more finely balanced for younger people and we advise that this evolving evidence should be taken into account when considering the use of the vaccine, as JVCI has done.’
According to Public Health England (PHE), the vaccine programme is estimated to have prevented more than 10,000 deaths in England alone by the end of March.
Separately, yesterday’s daily death toll from Covid was 13, bringing the UK total to 127,583. Some 81 deaths have been reported in seven days – down 48 per cent. A further 2,613 people have tested positive for Covid, taking the tally to 4,428,553.
The weekly total is down 10 per cent. Cases have fallen across all regions except the North West.
The Indian strain of Covid is likely to be declared a ‘variant of concern’ after more than 40 clusters were reportedly found across England.