Scientific data do not show a direct link between the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and blood clots, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices convener Lee Ping-ing (李秉穎) said yesterday.
Lee’s remarks comes amid concern over the vaccine’s safety, as several European nations have suspended its rollout due to reports of blood clots in some recipients.
Taiwan is expected to soon approve the drug and begin its COVID-19 vaccination program.
Photo: CNA
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) last week said that it was conducting a survey of hospitals to gauge the willingness of front-line healthcare workers, who are in the first priority group to be vaccinated, to receive the shots.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said at the Legislative Yuan yesterday morning that the preliminary results of the survey showed that 43 percent of healthcare workers who directly work with COVID-19 patients and 28 percent of healthcare workers who work at hospitals that treat COVID-19 patients, but do not directly care for such patients, which together up add up to about 60,000 people, are willing to be inoculated.
At a CDC news conference yesterday afternoon, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is also the CECC’s spokesman, said that the survey covered about 180,000 front-line healthcare workers and, as about 90 percent of hospitals have completed the survey, there are 59,984 people willing to get vaccinated, suggesting an acceptance rate of 32.7 percent.
Asked about the vaccine’s safety, Lee said: “Adverse events are to be expected in all large-scale vaccination programs, so scientific methods are used to analyze whether such adverse events are directly linked to the vaccine.”
One way to determine whether there is a link is to compare the incidence rate of symptoms occuring in the target population who have not been vaccinated against the incidence rate of symptoms occuring after vaccination, he said.
According to AstraZeneca’s review of safety data of people who have received its COVID-19 vaccine, the projected cases of pulmonary embolism is 703.87 and deep vein thrombosis is 861.7, Lee said.
The drugmaker’s review covered more than 17 million people vaccinated in the UK and the EU, and is based on data received as of Monday last week.
However, so far, based on the number of cases the company has received, there have only been 15 events of deep vein thrombosis and 22 events of pulmonary embolism reported among those who have received the shot, which is similar across other licensed COVID-19 vaccines, Lee added.
The data showed that thromboembolic events reported after getting an AstraZeneca shot did not occur more frequently, and is lower than would be expected to occur naturally in the general population, he added.
“Based on the data observed so far, we can say that there is no direct causal relationship between blood clots and the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine,” Lee said.
Asked why the CECC advises against people younger than 18 getting vaccinated against COVID-19, Lee said that the organs of children have not yet reached full maturity, and most clinical trials of new drugs or vaccines are first conducted on adults.
As there is not enough data on the effects and safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine on young people, the CECC does not recommend it for this group at this time, he said.
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