60,000 Taiwanese volunteer for AstraZeneca shot amid blood clot fears

六萬名台灣阿斯利康注射志願者恐發生血栓

Taiwan still on schedule to deliver 117,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine despite safety concerns: CECC


TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Despite inoculations of the AstraZeneca vaccine being suspended in some European countries over a potentially deadly side effect, 60,000 people have volunteered to be the first recipients of the jab in Taiwan.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was first administered in the U.K. on Jan. 4 and gradually gained approval in other countries that month. However, its rollout in South Africa was suspended in February, as it appeared to be less effective against the coronavirus variant first discovered in that country.

In March, several European countries, including Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and Slovenia, began suspending the vaccine following reports of recipients suffering blood clots. Norway's medicine agency reported four cases of "serious blood clotting in adults," with one person in Austria suffering a blood clot-caused pulmonary embolism and one death from a blood clot reported in Denmark.

When speaking to the media prior to attending a session of the Legislative Yuan on Tuesday (March 16), Health Minister and Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said the government still believes that the vaccine is safe, and the timeframe for its delivery has not been affected, reported Liberty Times. Chen added that 60,000 volunteers have stepped forward to take the vaccine, 43 percent of whom are frontline healthcare workers and 28 percent of whom are second-line medical workers.

Chen said the decision on whether to administer the vaccines will likely be made this week. Earlier this month, Taiwan received 117,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the first batch the country has received.

He stressed that information is being gathered on the vaccine. The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to complete its safety inspection on Wednesday (March 17), after which it will hold a meeting of experts within two days to review the vaccine itself and the overall international situation.

Chen pledged that he will report on the findings to the media.

On Sunday (March 14), AstraZeneca announced on its website that after reviewing data on more than 17 million recipients of the vaccine in Europe, it had found "no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or thrombocytopenia, in any defined age group, gender, batch or in any particular country." It acknowledged that 15 events of DVT and 22 cases of pulmonary embolism had been reported but claimed these numbers are "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."