Anyone under 30 will be offered an alternative Covid jab to the AstraZeneca vaccine due to mounting evidence linking it to rare blood clots, the UK’s vaccine advisory body says.
More than 31 million people in the UK have already have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and more than five million have also had their second dose.
What is the concern about clots?
The UK is now using all three coronavirus vaccines which have been approved for use in the country: Pfizer, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna.
Following concern about a possible link between the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and very rare cases of blood clotting, the government has said that under-30s will be offered an alternative jab.
A review by drugs regulator MHRA found that by the end of March, 79 people in the UK had suffered rare blood clots after vaccination – 19 of whom had died.
Professor Wei Shen, chair of the government’s joint committee on vaccination and immunisation, said the decision to offer an alternative was “just on the side of safety, rather than any particularly significant concern about the risk from the vaccine itself”.
And the MHRA’s Dr June Raine said that, “the balance of benefits and known risks is still very favourable for the majority of people”.
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