Indians Who Have Taken Covishield Vaccine Should Not Panic, Here’s Why
Indians Who Have Taken Covishield Vaccine Should Not Panic, Here’s Why
Astrazeneca admitted to its vaccine causing very rare blood clotting side effect.
1 May 2024
The Covishield vaccine is also found to have caused a low platelet count post immunisation. The AstraZeneca vaccine was manufactured in a Pune-based Serum institute and was sold under the name ‘Covishield’. This is the first time that the global manufacturing giant has come on record and accepted these rare side effects, and this confirmation has become a source of panic and hysteria among those who were administered this vaccine in India.
The company is currently facing a lawsuit in court which alleges it had severe side effects and deaths on account of the vaccine, and was forced to accept that the vaccine does cause the aforementioned rare but extreme side effects known as Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS).
Although, even if the official confirmation has come to light recently, the side effects of the vaccines had been common knowledge in scientific literature ever since the pandemic was at its peak. In fact, countries like Australia had prohibited the use of this vaccine for quite a while.
Even during the machiavellian wrath of the coronavirus, very few of these rare cases were reported from India and South Asian countries in general. A senior health ministry official commented on the situation and reassured that TTS is exceptionally rare in Indians and South Asians; further, he added that the risk benefit analysis of the vaccine clearly proves that it saved more lives than caused harm, and hence the pros outweigh the cons.
It was also found that the risk of suffering TTS is highest and most likely shortly after getting the jab (the initial few weeks after the first dose of vaccine). Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who is the director of Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was also a member of WHO’s advisory committee, reiterated the need to dispel people’s fears regarding suffering any consequences now because people have already gotten their 3rd doses a long time back.
AstraZeneca reported rates of 8.1 TTS cases per million receiving the first dosage and 2.3 TTS cases per million receiving the second dose, according to a 2022 study published in the Lancet Global Health. The study also revealed regional differences in TTS reporting, with Nordic nations reporting the most cases (17.6 per million doses) and Asian nations reporting the fewest occurrences (0.2 per million doses).
