A government panel of experts in India is investigating if there were any blood clotting problems among people who received either of the two coronavirus vaccines being used in the country, NDTV reported on Friday.
NK Arora, the adviser of National Adverse Events Following Immunisation committee, told NDTV that the possibility of blood clotting was being investigated like other side effects of vaccines. “Yes, the investigation is on,” he said. “It’s part of regular review and is done with every vaccine, it has been done in the past as well and nothing new in it.The conclusion [of the investigation] will be made public once the report is submitted to government.”
Arora added that a report submitted to the government by the committee last month showed no cases of blood clotting in India.
Two unidentified officials had told Mint on Thursday that the committee would investigate even mild cases of blood clotting.
The development came two days after the European Medicines Agency said it had found a possible link between AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine and rare cases of blood clotting in recipients, according to Reuters. However, the drug regulator left it to the countries to assess the risk themselves.
The Serum Institute is producing the AstraZeneca vaccine in India under the name Covishield. Serum Institute’s shot and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin are the two vaccines being used in India’s massive inoculation drive.
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Amid the blood clotting concerns, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation on Wednesday recommended that people under the age of 30 should be offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.
The move came after a review by Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory, the UK’s drug regulator, showed that 79 people in the country had suffered rare blood clots after vaccination by March-end. Nineteen of them had died. Millions of people have been administered the vaccine so far.
The vaccine is currently banned in Denmark, Latvia, The Netherlands and Norway. France, Germany, Finland, Lithuania, Sweden, Iceland and Spain have restricted it based on the age of the beneficiaries.
On March 16, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had vouched for the safety of the vaccine. “That vaccine is safe and works extremely well, and now, only six months later, it is being made in multiple places from India to the US, as well as Britain, and it is being used around the world,” he had said.
On March 15, World Health Organization chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said during a press briefing that no causal link had been established yet between blood clotting and the vaccine. However, some countries expressed doubts about the safety of the shot after several cases emerged of people developing blood clots or brain haemorrhages after inoculation.
AstraZeneca had said that a safety review of people inoculated with its coronavirus vaccine had shown no evidence of increased risk of blood clots.
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