Study finds no cases of blood clot in AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine

A new trial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine by Chilean researchers has found no cases of blood clots.

According to a report published on Friday by Reuters, the trial which studied 2,200 participants finds no instance of blood clots.

According to the leader of the research group, who is from the University of Chile, Dr. Maria Elena Santolaya, the trial findings show the possibility of a blood clot is very minimal from the vaccination.

Santolaya disclosed that his team studied people of all ages, with 20 percent of them over 60 years old.

“In no age group, among women or men, did we have any blood clotting of any nature,” she said.

Santolaya also cited interim results of AstraZeneca’s vaccine trials among 34,000 people in Peru, Chile, and the United States that showed it was 76 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19, 100 percent effective against serious or critical COVID-19, and 85 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19 among people over 65.

She stated that data – gathered in a controlled trial – should not be directly compared to a real-world study that showed the Sinovac vaccine widely administered in Chile was 67 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infection.

“The central message behind all this is that the vaccines we have in Chile for COVID-19, Sinovac, Pfizer, and now AstraZeneca, protect in more than 80 percent of cases against serious illness,” she said.

Recall that over a dozen European countries restricted or suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, due to reports of blood clots combined with low platelets in a very small number of people who received it.

The rector of the University of Chile, Ennio Vivaldi, however, has assured Chileans that the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe.

“All the trials show that the risks are minimal compared to the protection factor a vaccine carries,” he said.