LONDON — Europe’s medicines regulator on Wednesday announced a possible link between the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford and rare blood clotting issues in adults who received the shot.
A British government committee advising on coronavirus vaccinations said Wednesday most people under 30 should be offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca jab if possible, due to concerns over blood clots.
It comes after a review into extremely rare cases of unusual blood clots in some people vaccinated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot.
The move came after the UK’s independent Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency concluded its own review into possible links between the vaccine and reported blood clots.
June Raine, the agency’s head, said that 79 cases of unusual blood clots had been reported in the UK as of the end of March and 19 people had died. More than 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca shot have been given out nationwide as part of the UK’s rapid mass inoculation campaign.
The World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency have echoed this conclusion.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca said: “Patient safety remains the company’s highest priority”.
