• ENG

26 cases of blood clot after Covishield shot: Minor side effect of COVID-19 vax, says National AEFI

26 cases of blood clot after Covishield shot:  Minor side effect of COVID-19 vax, says National AEFI
According to the National AEFI, the incidents of bleeding or clotting after COVID-19 vaccination in India are minuscule and ‘in line with the expected number of diagnoses of these conditions in the country’.

According to the National AEFI report, 26 recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine Covishield suffered from blood clots after getting the jab. Read on to know more.

Written by Jahnavi Sarma |Updated : May 18, 2021 9:31 AM IST

Reports of COVID-19 vaccine side effects keep showing up in the news regularly. The one vaccine that received much negative publicity is Oxford-AstraZeneca's vaccine, which is sold as Covishield in India. This is one of the two vaccines that were approved for use in the country when the mass vaccination drive kicked off. The other vaccine is India's indigenous vaccine, Covaxin, manufactured by Bharat Biotech. In India too, there have been reports of people experiencing adverse reactions after getting the Covishield jab. But these are mostly minor, and, except a few cases, the going was smooth. According to a report submitted by the National AEFI (Adverse Event Following Immunization) Committee to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), there have been 26 cases of severe side effects where recipients suffered from blood clots. The National AEFI looked into complaints after some countries raised alerts on post-vaccination "embolic and thrombotic events" on March 11 this year, particularly with the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. These alerts led to the decision to conduct an urgent in-depth analysis of the adverse events (AE) in India in the light of the global concerns.

Clotting events minuscule, says report

According to the National AEFI, the incidents of bleeding or clotting after COVID-19 vaccination in India are minuscule and 'in line with the expected number of diagnoses of these conditions in the country'. The report noted that as of April 3 this year, 75,435,381 vaccine doses had been administered (Covishield-68,650,819; Covaxin-6,784,562). Of these, 65,944,106 were first doses and 9,491,275 second doses. Till date, according to the report, there have been more than 23,000 adverse events, which were reported via the CoWIN platform. Out of these cases, only 700 cases (9.3 cases per million doses administered) were reported to be serious and severe.

498 serious cases reported till date

The report said that out of 498 serious and severe events, 26 cases were reported to be potential thromboembolic (formation of a clot in a blood vessel that might also break loose and get carried by the blood stream to plug another vessel) events. This was noticed after administration of Covishield vaccine - with a reporting rate of 0.61 cases per million doses. The report mentions that there were no potential thromboembolic events reported following the administration of Covaxin vaccine.

Also Read

More News

Risk of blood clot miniscule but definitive

AEFI data in India showed that there is "very miniscule but definitive risk of thromboembolic events". The report says that the reporting rate of these events in India is around 0.61 per million doses, which is much lower than the four cases per million reported by the UK's regulator Medical and Health Regulatory Authority (MHRA). Germany has reported 10 events per million doses.

Advisory regarding Thromboembolic events

Many studies say that the risk of thromboembolic events is almost 70 per cent less in people of South and South East Asian descent in comparison to Europeans. But not leaving anything to chance, the Union Health Ministry is issuing advisories to healthcare workers and vaccine beneficiaries to encourage people to be aware of suspected thromboembolic symptoms occurring within 20 days after receiving any COVID-19 vaccine (particularly Covishield) and report preferably to the health facility where the vaccine was administered.

(With inputs from IANS)