AstraZeneca Shots Temporarily Banned In Philippines For Those Under 60 - Health Department

The Philippines is temporarily suspending the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 for people under 60 years of age, amid general blood clot concerns, the Department of Health said on Thursday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th April, 2021) The Philippines is temporarily suspending the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 for people under 60 years of age, amid general blood clot concerns, the Department of Health said on Thursday.

"We are aware of the recommendation of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to list blood clots as very rare side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine. While we have not seen such incidents in the country, the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] has recommended to temporarily suspend the use of the vaccine for persons below 60 years old as we await results of the review being done by our local experts, as well as the official guidance of the WHO [World Health Organization]," FDA Director General Rolando Enrique Domingo said as quoted in the Thursday release.

Domingo emphasized that the temporary suspension does not mean that the AstraZeneca vaccine is unsafe or ineffective.

The Philippine Department of Health said nonetheless, that it was adopting the FDA recommendation to temporarily suspend the use of the vaccine "following recent reports of rare cases of blood clots with low platelets detected in some individuals inoculated with the vaccine.

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Earlier this week, the EMA said that, according to its findings, blood clots could be a side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine but the "reported combination of blood clots and low blood platelets is very rare, and the overall benefits of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19 outweigh the risks of side effects."

Following EMA's revelations, the WHO said that the "causal relationship" between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the occurrence of blood clots "is considered plausible but is not confirmed."

Meanwhile, the UK government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) recommended on Wednesday that people under 30 be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca amid concerns that the vaccine may cause rare blood clots in younger people.

AstraZeneca said on Wednesday that it was working to establish the causes of blood clots in people inoculated with its coronavirus vaccine, but emphasized that these were very rare cases.