Chair of Epidemiology at Deakin University Professor Catherine Bennett says the EU countries which have suspended their AstraZeneca vaccine rollouts over blood clot concerns are doing so out of an “abundance of caution”.
Portugal has become the latest EU nation to pause the rollout - joining Spain, Italy, France, Germany and others over concerns the jab may have caused blood clots in some recipients.
“It’s actually that term we’ve heard a lot of recently, abundance of caution, in operation here,” Ms Bennett told Sky News.
“These blot clot conditions they’ve been talking about … they’ve reported 37 across Europe, including the UK, but that’s after 17 million people have been given the AstraZeneca vaccine".
Ms Bennet said there was not a “strong link” between vaccinations and the blood clots since the usual rate for blood clots in the community is around 52 per 100,000 people.
“In these older age groups, the rates can be even higher so in fact 37 out of 17 million cases is a very low number.”
“They’re just stopping to pause and make sure that there isn’t a causal link – we don’t understand how there could be with this vaccine – but they’re just being extra cautious”.
Ms Bennett said most of the European countries are only looking at suspending their rollouts for a week or two and some have only paused the particular batch associated with the blood clots.
