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Use of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine will be suspended in Germany from Wednesday for those under 60, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Health Minister Jens Spahn announced on Tuesday.
Their announcement came after the German Standing Committee on Immunization (STIKO) evaluated the vaccine following reports of blood clots after vaccination.
The decision marks a turnaround from Germany’s policy of only giving the Oxford / AstraZeneca kick to the younger ones.
“We need to be able to trust vaccines,” Merkel said, arguing that citizens’ trust would flow from every case being investigated.
Earlier on Tuesday, several regions in Germany suspended use of the vaccine in people under the age of 60. Data from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute showed that there were 31 suspected cases of blood clots in the brain after vaccination with the vaccine, with all but two being in women aged 20 to 63.
Abnormally low platelets, which promote blood clotting, have been reported in 19 cases, and nine people have died. These are “findings that we cannot ignore,” Merkel said.
While Merkel acknowledged that repeated changes to the recommendations for the Oxford / AstraZeneca coup were doomed to lead to “uncertainty”, Spahn called Tuesday’s development a “setback”.
Berlin, Brandenburg and Munich took the precautionary measure of suspending the use of the jab for those under 60 on Tuesday afternoon. The announcements came in the wake of the state-owned Charité Hospital in Berlin, as well as clinics in the Vivantes group, saying they were stopping use of the vaccine in women under 55.
The district of Euskirchen, near Bonn, first suspended the vaccine in women under 55 on Monday, after the deaths of a 47-year-old woman and a 28-year-old woman who fell ill.
The policy change comes after Germany resumed immunizations with the vaccine over concerns about a possible link to incidents of blood clotting. Just under two weeks ago, the European Medicines Agency said the vaccine was safe and its benefits far outweighed the risks. Germany had previously not given the vaccine to people aged 65 and over, citing insufficient evidence of the vaccine’s effectiveness in this age group at the time.
On March 29, the Canadian Immunization Committee recommended suspending the vaccine for people under 55, citing reports from Europe of incidents of blood clotting.
The suspensions also come following a preprinted March 28 report from researchers in Germany, Canada and Austria, including a scientist at the Paul-Ehrlich Institute, who linked the vaccine to the development of a blood clotting disorder.
However, some academics have said that the document’s implication of a causal association is not supported by evidence. Describing the causal finding as “unsafe,” Adam Finn, professor of pediatrics at the University of Bristol, asked for information on the incidence and mechanism of blood clotting.
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