New Delhi, May 17
India has reported 26 potential cases of bleeding and clotting after administration of Covishield vaccine, a government panel investigating adverse events following Covid-19 immunisation has found.
The Union Health Ministry said in a statement on Monday that over 23,000 adverse events have been reported since the vaccination drive involving Covishield and Covaxin vaccines started in the country and of these 700 cases were reported to be serious.
The National Adverse Event Following Immunisation committee (AEFI) has completed an in-depth case review of 498 serious and severe events, of which 26 cases have been reported to be potential thromboembolic (formation of a clot in a blood vessel that might also break loose and carried by the blood stream to plug another vessel) events – following administration of Covishield vaccine – “with a reporting rate of 0.61 cases/ million doses”.
“There were no potential thromboembolic events reported following administration of Covaxin vaccine,” the ministry said.
As alerts were raised in some countries on post-vaccination “embolic and thrombotic events” on March 11 particularly with AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine (Covishield), a decision was taken to conduct an urgent in-depth analysis of the adverse events (AE) in India in the light of global concerns, the ministry said.
The National AEFI committee noted that as of April 3, 75,435,381 vaccine doses had been administered (Covishield – 68,650,819; Covaxin – 6,784,562).
“Of these, 65,944,106 were first doses and 9,491,275 second dose. Since the Covid-19 vaccination drive was initiated – more than 23,000 adverse events were reported through the CO-WIN platform reported from 684 of the 753 districts of the country.
