People under 50 advised not to get AstraZeneca jab because of clot risk
Plans to vaccinate everyone in Australia against COVID-19 by October are in doubt with people under 50 advised not to get the AstraZeneca jab because of the risk of blood clots.
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Australia’s plan to vaccinate everyone against COVID-19 by October is in disarray with people under 50 now being advised not to get the AstraZeneca jab after experts deemed the risk of blood clots too high.
In a snap press conference last night, Prime Minsiter Scott Morrison and Australia’s Chief Medical Officer announced the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation had decided the Pfizer vaccine was now preferred over the AstraZeneca vaccine in adults aged under 50 years who have not already received a first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine.
“This is based both on the increased risk of complications from COVID-19 with increasing age, and thus increased benefit of the vaccination, and the potentially lower, but not zero risk, of this rare event with increasing age,” CMO Paul Kelly said.
The government will now have to review its entire vaccine portfolio, in order to rejig the rollout so those under 50, particularly frontline health workers and those in Phase 1b, can receive a jab.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is still recommended for people aged 50 and older.
The decision by ATAGI comes after reports of a very rare but serious side effect of AstraZeneca where younger people were developing unusual blood clots.
Prof Kelly said in the rare event a person developed this blood clot, there was a 25 per cent chance of death.
Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy said health care workers under 50 would now be reprioritised to the Pfizer jab.
“For Phase 1, which is vulnerable people, we will pretty much continue as we are,” he said.
“Those over 70 and 80 will continue to get AstraZeneca at their GPs and be confident in its efficacy and its safety.
“For those health care workers under 50, they will now be prioritised to Pfizer, and that might delay that particular phase of 1b.
“But that’s the only phase that might be delayed.”
The government was advised that the AstraZeneca vaccine should be given to people where the benefit outweigh the risks.
Those would include older people, for whom the risk of getting seriously ill from coronavirus is greater than for young people.
Dr Murphy said the recalibration was considered out of “an abundance of caution”, given only some four to six people in a million have been sickened by the vaccine.
Australia has contracts to obtain 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, 50 million of that to be manufactured in the country, while the deal with Pfizer is worth just 10 million doses.
Mr Morrison assured Australians the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe and effective.
He said data from overseas indicated there were between one and five vaccine recipients per million who experienced the rare syndrome, compared to up to 10 per 10,000 women who took the oral contraceptive pill.
“In the UK, the advice is that some 6000 people’s lives have already been saved by this very vaccine, so we need to consider the positive benefits of them,” he said.
As GPs reported being inundated with questions about the clot risk, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd assured them in a briefing yesterday that more advice would be shared with them “as soon as it is available”.
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Karen Price said she was not concerned about any immediate widespread safety threat.
Dr Price said the change should not dramatically dent the immunisation program as GPs already managed much more common side effects in their daily practices.
However, doctors are hoping to develop a range of “decision aids”, such as simple graphics, to better communicate the real risks and benefits of the shots.
“We deal with this all the time – we give people advice when they travel about blood clots, we give people advice when they take the oral contraceptive pill on blood clots. We give people advice when they take antibiotics that there is a risk,” Dr Price said
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