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BERLIN – German vaccine authority to recommend government ban of AstraZeneca PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine for people under 60 following incidents of blood clotting in recipients, official said on Tuesday of the national disease control agency – potentially presenting the rollout of the vaccine spray in the country further delays.
The final decision to change who is likely to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine in Germany rests with the federal government, but local authorities from Berlin to Munich and individual hospitals elsewhere were already planning a partial ban on Tuesday by denying the vaccine to young recipients.
The change in recommendation comes 12 days after the European Medicines Agency, the European medicines regulator, said the vaccine was “safe and effective” and did not increase the risk of blood clots.
Like other countries in the European Union, Germany has struggled to scale up vaccinations amid dose shortages and bureaucratic and logistical bottlenecks. Preventing anyone under the age of 60 from receiving the vaccine could make it difficult for the government to meet its revised goal of providing all residents with a vaccine by the end of September.
It could also exacerbate already widespread misgivings about the vaccine. Germany initially cleared the vaccine only for those under 65 due to a lack of efficacy data in older age groups before briefly banning it for several days earlier in March, in because of concerns about rare incidents of blood clotting after injections.
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