LONDON (AFP, REUTERS) - Britain's decision to advise all those under 40 years old to take an alternative vaccine to the Oxford-AstraZeneca one will not affect the country's plan to offer a first dose to all adults by the end of July, a senior health official said on Friday (May 7).
"I can say to you that on current plans, our vaccine supply schedule will support the change offered by the (vaccine advisory group) JCVI without limiting the speed and scale of the vaccine roll-out," England's deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam told a news conference.
"I do expect that we are still on target to offer a first dose to all adults by the end of July."
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said it was taking the "precautionary approach" for adults aged 30-39, after assessment of blood clot risks.
Professor Wei Shen Lim of the JCVI advisory committee said that those aged 30-39 will be "preferentially offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine".
This will happen as long as an alternative is available and does not create a substantial delay in vaccination, and as long as the Britain keeps its virus situation under control, he added.
Prof Lim said the aim was to "further increase vaccine confidence" as under-40s are due to be vaccinated soon, by showing that the government is putting a "high priority on safety".
Britain - which launched its mass vaccination drive in December last year with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot - is still on track to give all adults a first vaccine dose by the end of July, Prof Lim said.
He added that the success of the vaccine roll-out means that "a future wave of infection is likely to be smaller than anticipated".
Ms June Raine, who heads Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said it was not changing its advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine, as side effects were "extremely rare".
From more than 28 million first doses of the vaccine administered in Britain by April 28, there were 242 cases reported of clots combined with low blood platelet levels, or 10.5 per million, she said.
These clots occurred in 141 women and 100 men aged from 18 to 93, and the overall case death rate was 20 per cent, with 49 deaths. Six cases have been reported after a second dose of the vaccine.
Ms Raine said this meant that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine still outweigh the risks of coronavirus for the vast majority of people. For younger people, this ratio is "more fully balanced," she said, however.
Nearly 128,000 people have died from the virus in Britain, the highest figure in Europe. Britain has now administered nearly 35 million first doses of vaccine and more than 16 million second doses.
