AstraZeneca vaccine to be avoided to people over the age of 60 years

On Sunday, the head of the EU drug regulator’s Covid-19 task force has stated that the countries should prefer avoiding the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to the people over the age of 60 years. Such a decision comes into effect after there is reports of blood clotting and also there are many other options when it comes to vaccination.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) believes that AstraZeneca doses are purely safe for people belonging to any age group. But, many European Union member states has started discontinuing the vaccine to a particular age group, especially the ones in between 50-65 years of age. The aged residents are getting the vaccine due to low rate of blood clotting, noted mostly in the younger generation.

Covid-19 task force chief, Marco Cavaleri said to the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, “In a pandemic context, our position was and is that the risk-benefit ratio remains favorable for all age groups.”

Moreover, with the fall in the number of Covid-19 cases and as the younger population is getting less prone to the infection, Cavaleri stated that it is safe to use on them Covid-19 vaccines that are based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology like Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech doses.

In the context of whether the health authorities should stop providing AstraZeneca doses to people more than 60 years of age, Cavaleri quoted, “Yes, and many countries, such as France and Germany, are considering it in the light of greater availability of mRNA vaccines.”

On Friday, the government of Italy stated that it shall discontinue giving AstraZeneca vaccine to people aged above 60 years after a young person after receiving the dose died of a rare form of blood clotting.

Like many other European countries, Italy also stopped AstraZeneca vaccination temporarily in the month of March due to the blood clotting issue.

It then again started on with this vaccine after getting a recommendation that the vaccine can be ‘preferably’ given to people over the age of 60 years. As per the EMA, the benefits of the vaccine was much more than the risks.