The Asia Pacific region mulls stopping the use of the controversial AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Its unexpected side effects like blood clotting made many governments restricting its use.
The shrinking usage of AstraZeneca mirrors the same moves in Europe, where the potential links between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare occurrences of blood clots were reported by the EMA last week.
While Europe pauses the use of the AstraZeneca jab, the Asian countries where the virus has been far better contained and people don’t run a high risk of contracting or dying from corona, resistance to the vaccine could be even stronger.
“In the context of Australia, where we currently have no COVID-19 deaths, the risk-benefit relationship of the AstraZeneca vaccine is very different, particularly when other vaccines are potentially available that do not appear to share this risk.” said Professor Nikolai Petrovsky from the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in South Australia.
Like Australia, COVID-19 fatalities across Asian Pacific nations like China, Singapore and Taiwan are near zero at present, SMHP reported on Monday.
