Government committee establishes no blood clot risk from Covaxin and Covishield

Last updated on March 25th, 2021 at 09:17 am

 There is no increased risk of blood clotting post vaccination with Covaxin and Covishield so far, ruled top government committee. The top committee came to the finding post analyzing more than 400 adverse reactions encountered during ongoing vaccination drive in India. 

Dr NK Arora, executive director of the INCLEN Trust and an advisor to the National Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) Committee that is looking into this issue, said, “These cases have been analysed and there is no unusual bleeding or clotting manifestations either with Covishield or Covaxin.” 

Dr Arora said that apart from 412 cases of severe AEFI and serious AEFI, which included hospitalizations and deaths, as of March 13, no abnormal increase in instances of bleeding or clotting has been found. 

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The said findings have been submitted to National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19 (NEGVAC) and GACVS. For future a system is under process that would reduce the time lapse between any serious AEFI reported by States and Centre and investigation results into the said reaction. This also includes making delivery of lab and post-mortem reports for every AEFI much quickly. 

Dr Arora said, “We are trying to see that within two or three weeks, the results should be available for each AEFI. It will be almost real-time.” 

The step of reviewing severe and serious AEFI by India came after many countries raised concerns around blood clotting risks involved post vaccination with Covid-19 vaccine developed by University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. Many nations have suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine administration like Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Thailand, Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia and Iceland. India’s Serum Institute of India is manufacturing Covishield vaccine, the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca. 

WHO and European Medicines Authority said last week that available data didn’t suggest blood clotting link with vaccination.