Australia will consider banning the AstraZeneca vaccine from being given to people under 30 in line with Britain recommendations.
British regulators said young people should be offered alternative vaccines while experts investigate its link to rare blood clots.
Most Australians were to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine with the government securing 53.8 million doses, including 50 million to be manufactured locally.
The jab was declared safe by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and is an integral part of the nation’s slow-moving vaccine rollout – meaning there is no sure-fire way to demand another vaccine.
Chief medical officer Paul Kelly admitted the link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots was getting stronger
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Health Minister Greg Hunt and state premiers have publicly backed the vaccine and urged Australians to get it.
However, the federal government has at the same time asked the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation to review the British findings.
‘The government has asked ATAGI and the TGA to immediately consider and advise on the latest vaccination findings out of Europe and the UK,’ it said.
‘Regulators have already been working with their international counterparts to consider the latest international evidence.’
Advice from the two bodies will be given to the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, comprised of the state and federal chief health officers.
The UK government’s vaccine advisory group has ruled that people aged between 19 and 29 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine while experts continue to investigate its link to rare blood clots
Mr Morrison said National Cabinet would also consider the British recommendations when it next meets.
‘The Australian Government places safety above all else, as it has done throughout the pandemic, and will continue to follow the medical advice in protecting Australians,’ a government spokesperson said.
There were just 79 cases in Britain out of 20 million who received the jab.
Chief medical officer Paul Kelly admitted the link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots was getting stronger.
‘This potential link, it is still potential but more looking more likely between the AstraZeneca vaccine in certain people and this extremely rare blood clotting event,’ he told Sunrise on Thursday morning.
‘But I think very importantly, we need to realise this is an extremely rare event and we will be looking for the advice, the specific advice from our medical expert panel who are meeting today.’
A review by the UK’s drugs watchdog the MHRA found that by the end of March, a rate of just one in 250,000 Britons who received the AstraZeneca vaccine had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries.
Of the 79 cases, 19 died and three were under the age of 30.
Slides presented at a press conference announcing the change in guidance on Wednesday showed that younger people are more prone to blood clots after vaccination than older groups.
The MHRA said healthy people aged 19 to 29 should be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs instead when the programme moves to younger groups in the coming months.
Anyone who has already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, regardless of their age, is being advised to go for their second appointment as planned.
AstraZeneca’s jab is only being paused for under-30s in Britain because coronavirus levels are getting low, said the nation’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam.
If Covid was still more prevalent, as it is in the rest of Europe, he suggested that the vaccine would still be recommended for all ages, including young people.
The MHRA insisted there was still no concrete proof that the British-made vaccine is causing the clots, but admitted the link was getting firmer.
The review prompted the UK Government’s vaccine advisory group, the JCVI, to recommend that people aged 18 to 29 be given an alternative jab.
It comes after a Melbourne man’s rare blood clotting disorder was ‘likely linked’ to the AstraZeneca vaccine.
A nurse administers the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to a patient at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne on March 17
The TGA and the ATAGI met on Saturday morning and Acting Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said no changes to the AstraZeneca rollout were recommended.
He said it was likely, given similarities with rare overseas cases, that the man’s clotting disorder was related to him receiving the jab.
However, Professor Kidd again emphasised that the risk of serious disease and death from Covid-19 among the mostly unvaccinated Australian population was ‘far greater’.
The expert advice is the result of investigations into the illness of the man in his 40s who was admitted to Melbourne’s Box Hill hospital after receiving the AstraZeneca jab on March 22.
‘While at this time, we don’t have evidence of causality, the clinical features of this case are consistent with what we have seen in international reports of similar cases,’ Prof Kidd said.
‘And it is likely that the case reported yesterday is related to the vaccine. This would be consistent with international experience.’
Four million Australians were due to have jabs by the end of March, a target missed by more than 3.3 million.
The government had aimed for all Australians who want a vaccine to get one by the end of October, a goal critics say is out of reach.
Health Minister Greg Hunt expects more than one million Australians to be vaccinated ‘very soon’ and anticipates the two million mark will be exceeded not long after that as more general practices join the rollout.
On Wednesday, an elderly woman with pre-existing medical conditions died hours after receiving her Covid-19 vaccine in a Queensland aged care home.
Most Australians will be offered the AstraZeneca vaccine with the government securing 53.8million doses, including 50million to be manufactured onshore
It is understood the 82-year-old received a dose of the Pfizer vaccine at the Springwood Yurana Aged Care Facility on Wednesday, before she died in the afternoon.
Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said ‘at this stage there are no signs of any causal link’.
‘Any event that happens following vaccination is fully investigated,’ Professor Kelly said.
‘Sadly more than 1000 people pass in aged care every week. It is inevitable, as the head of the TGA has noted, that this will include people who have been recently vaccinated.
‘It can be expected that older and more frail people in an aged care setting may pass away due to progression of underlying disease or natural causes, this does not mean the vaccine has contributed to this.’
The woman had a lung condition.
