AstraZeneca just announced results from its US-based trial. It found the vaccine to be 79% effective and safe for use, despite recent concerns around reports of blood clots.
The government is gifting 8,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Papua New Guinea for frontline health workers, and is requesting an additional 1,000,000 doses from European authorities for the pacific nation.
Data from clinical trials and the real world COVID vaccine rollout suggest blood clots occur no more frequently in vaccinated people than they do in the general population.
The European Medicines Agency has found no link between thrombosis and the AstraZeneca vaccine, but precautionary investigations are continuing in some countries.
Italy’s decision to block export of AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia will likely not impact our vaccine roll-out. But vaccine scarcity is a looming problem in other parts of the world.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is the latest to struggle against the South African variant in trials, while in Israel vaccines may be beginning to have an effect.