Health Ministry plays down public worries about AstraZeneca vaccine side-effects
VOV.VN - An official of the Ministry of Health has played down public worries about AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine side-effects after the pharmaceutical giant admitted that the vaccine may cause extremely rare side-effects such as blood clots and low platelet count.
“The Ministry of Health believes that side-effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine (if any) only occur within 28 days after being administered and people who have been vaccinated should not panic,” said Luong Ngoc Khue, director of the Department of Medical Examination and Treatment Management under the Ministry of Health.
According to the health professional, people should not be too worried about the side-effects of the vaccine as it was administered a couple of years ago. In addition, blood clotting is also a side-effect that Vietnam has warned people about when the vaccination campaign was deployed.
“Initially when the COVID-19 vaccination was deployed, we were very cautious. The Ministry of Health has developed strict vaccination procedures to ensure people’s safety. The vaccination campaign was later deployed on a large scale as opposed to injection at medical facilities,” said Khue.
In Vietnam, tens of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered, but only a few cases of reactions related to post-vaccination Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) or blood clotting have been recorded, and they were not life-threatening, shared an epidemiologist from the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.
This is an extremely low rate, said the expert, adding that blood clots only occur within 28 days after vaccination.
Vietnam has stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine and no additional cases of adverse reactions after injection have been documented.
