Fauci: Lifting coronavirus restrictions now is ‘risky and potentially dangerous’
Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIAID director and White House chief medical adviser, argues public health measures are necessary to control the pandemic. He says vaccinations are ‘accelerating greatly’ but ‘there’s always the risk’ of another surge.
AstraZeneca issued a statement on Monday defending its COVID-19 vaccine after some countries raised concerns about blood clots in vaccine recipients and called for a temporary suspension.
The company said there is "no evidence of an increased risk" of blood clots after receiving its jab.
Ireland announced Sunday that it would temporarily suspend distributing the vaccine "out of an abundance of caution," Reuters reported. The move was announced after reports of blood clotting in some of the recipients in Norway.
AstraZeneca, the Cambridge, U.K., company, said more than 17 million people have been vaccinated with the shots in the European Union and the United Kingdom, and there has been "no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia, in any defined age group, gender, batch or any particular country."
The statement pointed to cases of pulmonary embolisms and said the number of these cases after receiving the shot are "much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar across other licensed COVID-19 vaccines."
The Netherlands followed Ireland late Sunday and announced that it was suspending vaccinations with the AstraZeneca shot as a precaution for two weeks. The health ministry said the move followed six new reports in Denmark and Norway of blood clotting and lowered levels of blood platelets in people aged under 50.
DENMARK SUSPENDS USE OF ASTRAZENECA'S COVID-19 VACCINE FOLLOWING REPORTS OF BLOOD CLOTS
The Dutch medicines authority also stressed that no link has been proven between the cases and the vaccine.
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The World Health Organization and the European Union’s medicines regulator have previously said that there was no link between the jab and an increased risk of developing a clot.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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