AstraZeneca: Expert discusses blood clot evidence

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Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, Paul Hunter, Professor of Medicine at the University of East Anglia, said “clearly more works need to be done” to establish clear links between the jab and blood clots. The professor’s comments come after 7 people out of 18 million vaccinated by 24th March died of blood clots after receiving the AstraZeneca jab in the UK.

Prof Hunter was asked whether the blood clots are a coincidence or whether there is in fact a causal link.

He said: “It is too early to say. But the first thing to say is actually it is not uncommon to get clusters of rare events purely by chance.

“But once you find that cluster in one population and it then crops up in another, such as previously in the German and now in the English, then I think the chances of that being a random association is very low.”

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Prof Hunter said the chance of dying from coronavirus if you don’t have the vaccine was “many times greater” than the risk of dying from blood clots after the AstraZeneca jab.

But he said the medical community musty quickly do “proper analysis of the cases.” 

He was then asked his opinion on the EU countries that have temporarily banned the jab to younger people.

He said: “Ultimately what they’ve done will lead to more deaths in their population than would have been otherwise if they carried on with the vaccine.”

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The specific cases are a rare condition known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) a type of blood clot in the brain.

Data released by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on Friday showed 22 cases of CVST.

But earlier, Dr June Raine, the chief executive of the MHRA, which is monitoring the safety of vaccines, stressed that public need not worry. 

She said: “The benefits… in preventing Covid-19 infection and its complications continue to outweigh any risks and the public should continue to get their vaccine when invited to do so.”

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Earlier this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron turned to Vladimir Putin to consider options of acquiring the Russian made Sputnik V vaccine amid concerns over the AstraZeneca jab.

But the Sputnik V vaccine has not been approved for use by the European Union.

The move saw Merkel’s government approval rating cut in half as Germans appear increasingly sceptical of the Chancellor’s handling of the Covid pandemic.

Critics slammed the pair’s move as ‘undermining consensus’ of Western nations who have sanctioned Russia for the Salisbury nerve agent poisonings in 2018.

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