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France’s top health body is due to say on Friday that recipients of a first dose of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine who are under 55 should get a second shot with a new-style messenger-RNA vaccine.
“This should normally be confirmed today”, Health Minister Olivier Veran told RTL radio, adding he did not want to announce the move ahead of a news conference by the body - the Haute Autorite de la Sante (HAS) - later in the day.
Mr Veran said this was a precautionary measure that could evolve in time, pending the gathering of further data on the AstraZeneca shot. France would continue to encourage the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, he added.
Two mRNA vaccines, one from Pfizer and BioNTech and another from Moderna , are approved for use in France.
Meanwhile Australia has finalised a deal to buy an extra 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine as it rapidly pivots away from its earlier plan to rely mainly on the AstraZeneca jab.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the deal just hours after saying Australia would stop using the AstraZeneca vaccine for people aged under 50.
He said the deal means Australia will get a total of 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of the year, enough to inoculate 20 million people in the nation of 26 million.
The pivot represents a significant shift in Australia’s overall approach and is likely to delay plans to have every person in the country inoculated by October.
A major part of Australia’s strategy had been the ability to make its own vaccines at home and not rely on shipments from abroad.
It had planned to manufacture some 50 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, enough for 25 million people. Australia had made no plans to make any other vaccines at home.
These changes come after the European Medicines Agency concluded that there was a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots in the brain in people who have received the vaccine.
Despite this finding, the EU regulatory agency still concluded that the overall benefits of this “highly effective vaccine in protecting recipients from severe Covid-19 disease, hospitalisation and death outweigh the risks of this very rare event.”
The first Irish case of a blood clot in a person after vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine was reported this week in a 40-year-old Dublin woman.
The woman is being treated at the Mater Hospital for cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), the blood clot in the brain that the EMA concluded was possibly linked to the jab.
The National Immunisation Advisory Committee met on Thursday to consider the EMA’s finding. It is consulting with EU colleagues and is considering whether any further advice on the use of the vaccine should be issued to the Department of Health if warranted.
–Agencies