Ontario confirms 1st person with rare blood clot after AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine — Canada’s 4th case out of 1M doses
Health officials in Ontario said a 60-year-old man has developed a rare blood clot after receiving the first shot from AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, marking the first such case in the Canadian province and the fourth in the country.
The patient has received treatment and is recovering at home, though no additional details would be released to protect his privacy, Ontario’s Ministry of Health said in a statement Friday.
The condition, known as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VIIT, has been confirmed in three other people out of more than 1.1 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses administered in Canada so far, according to the agency.
“While these serious reactions remain extremely rare, we have a robust process in place to monitor for any adverse events and have taken steps to ensure that these events are identified and treated as quickly as possible,” the statement reads. “All COVID-19 vaccines available in the province have been determined to be safe and effective by Health Canada, and have been shown to prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death.”
Ontario will continue to offer the AstraZeneca shots to people 40 and older, health officials said.
The findings come amid concern about the potential for blood clots from AstraZeneca’s vaccine even as experts insist that the overall benefits of the shots far outweigh the risk of side effects.
The European Union’s drug regulator recently investigated the connection between the vaccine and blood clots and found a “possible link,” especially among women younger than 60. However, the regulator declined to impose any age restrictions on the vaccine, noting that the number of blood-clot cases represents a small fraction of the millions of doses administered throughout Europe.
“The risk of mortality from COVID is much greater than the risk of mortality from these side effects,” the European Medicines Agency said earlier this month.
British regulators, meanwhile, said people younger than 30 should choose another vaccine just in case.
A new study published last week found that the risk of developing a blood clot in the brain is about 95 times higher for people who contract COVID-19 than those who don’t.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine is not available in the U.S., but another company’s coronavirus vaccine has raised concerns about rare blood clots in this country. U.S. officials recently halted the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s shots after six women developed a blood clot disorder. One of them died.
An advisory panel was scheduled to meet Friday to decide the fate of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The panel was reportedly leaning toward resuming the vaccine’s rollout.
