London: The U.K. reported 25 new cases of rare blood clots possibly linked to AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine, adding to the numbers that have caused some European countries to adopt precautionary measures.
The fresh reports lift the total number of cases to 30 as of March 24, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said in a statement Thursday. The benefits of the shot continue to outweigh the risks, the regulator said.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford, is under mounting scrutiny and has faced dwindling support in Europe. Still, countries are counting on the shot to help them exit the pandemic, and millions of doses have been administered across the region.
The U.K. agency said that the 30 incidents were out of 18.1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine given by March 24. Prior to that, the agency disclosed five cases on March 18, out of 11 million shots.
With the new reports, the rate of incidents with the AstraZeneca shot in the U.K. is about 1 in 600,000. There were no reports of the same reactions to the vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, which is also being used in Britain.
