German Vaccines Committee (STIKO) offers patients over 60 years old to use a different vaccine during the second round of vaccination, if the first shot they received was AstraZeneca.
Reuters quoted the authority, which said the following: "Until the appropriate data is available, STIKO recommends for people under 60 years old that instead of the second AstraZeneca dose, a dose of an mRNA-vaccine should be given 12 weeks after the first vaccine".
The injection with mRNA includes a combination of vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Earlier, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) published current results of analysis of rare cases of blood clots tied with low level of platelets of people, who were vaccine with AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 (currently Vaxzevria) as the EMA reported.
“Independent external experts with a range of medical specialities, including haematologists, neurologists and epidemiologists, discussed specific aspects such as possible mechanisms, whether underlying risk factors could be identified and what additional data are needed to further characterise the observed events and the potential risk. At present the review has not identified any specific risk factors, such as age, gender or a previous medical history of clotting disorders, for these very rare events,” the message said.
Thus, the cause-and-effect link of these side effects with the vaccine is not proved but it is possible and further analysis continues.
