Health

UK reiterates support for AstraZeneca vaccine

London, Apr 8 (efe-epa).- British health minister Matt Hancock on Thursday urged citizens of the United Kingdom to continue to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and backed the use of AstraZeneca shot, saying the risk of clotting remains low.

On Wednesday, British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) restricted the rollout of the AstraZeneca/Oxford to people aged under 30 over potential links between the vaccine and rare cases of blood clots.

That move came on the same day that the EU medicines regulator said it had found a possible link between the rare thrombosis events and the AstraZeneca vaccine, although the EMA reiterated that the benefits of getting the jab outweighed the risks, a view which Hancock shares.

“What we have learned in the last 24 hours is that the rollout of the vaccine is working,” Hancock said in a video he posted to Twitter.

“We have seen that the safety system is working because the regulators can spot even this extremely rare event — four in a million — and take necessary action to ensure the rollout is as safe as it possibly can be,” he added.

People aged between 18 and 29, who do not have underlying health conditions, will now be recommended other vaccines instead, according to MHRA.

Those vaccines include the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna jabs, which have both been approved for use in Britain.

Hancock underlined the vaccine was breaking the link between coronavirus cases and deaths, saying the “number of people dying from Covid halved again just in the last nine days… and is down 98 percent from the peak (recorded at the beginning of this year).”

More than 31 million people received the first vaccine first dose and over five million others got the second in the UK, according to the latest official figures. EFE-EPA

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