The AstraZeneca vaccine has benefits that outweigh any possible risks, the Africa Centre for Disease Control has said.

Its Director, Dr John Nkengasong, said on Thursday, 18 March 2021 that the Centre reached that conclusion after a meeting of experts on the continent regarding the recent reports of blood-clotting in some people who took the vaccine, which has led to 17 countries – mostly in Europe – suspending the use of the vaccine as a precautionary measure.

Denmark, Norway, Bulgaria, Iceland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and Cyprus have suspended all use of the vaccine. Five other countries (Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Luxembourg) have paused the use of a single batch of a million doses of the vaccine.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have said that there does not seem to be an increased risk of blood clots with the vaccine and have advised that vaccinations should continue.

On 16 March WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said, “We do not want people to panic, and we would, for the time being, recommend that countries continue vaccinating with AstraZeneca . . . So far, we do not find an association between these events and the vaccine.”

The EMA said there had been 30 reports of thromboembolic events among nearly five million people given the AstraZeneca vaccine in the European Economic Area

AstraZeneca also said 37 blood clots have been reported out of more than 17 million people vaccinated in the EU and Britain.

Five of the cases were deep vein thrombosis, and 22 were pulmonary embolisms. “This is much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar across other licensed covid-19 vaccines,” it said in a statement.

Addressing the concerns raised about the vaccine, Dr Nkengasong said: “As you are all aware, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been in the news and I will like to say this, first of all, this is a vaccine that was approved by the WHO, it’s a safe vaccine and the Africa CDC also approved the vaccine or endorsed the use of the vaccine”.

“Since then, we have heard, in the media, stories on many countries in Europe suspending the use of this vaccine because of some early events that were reported, especially thrombosis, which is blood clotting”.

“Africa CDC, in reacting to that, convened a meeting of the African Taskforce on Coronavirus, which is the main platform on which we bring experts together on the continent, review the state of the pandemic and also learn from each other”.

“So, after that session and after a serious discussion and review of the evidence that were reported, Africa CDC concluded that the benefits accruing from the AstraZeneca vaccines continue to outweigh any risk possible”, he noted.

He also mentioned that there have been a 5 per cent decrease in new cases of the pandemic across the entire African continent.