O Ministry of Health released this Thursday (13/4) a note in which he stressed that all doses of vaccine against Covid-19 distributed in Brazil are “safe and effective”. The statement comes amid doubts about the safety of applying AstraZeneca and Janssen immunizers due to the risk of thrombosis.
Also on this Thursday (13/4), the Anvisa issued a statement with a similar tone to emphasize the safety of immunizers. “No vaccine has been banned or disallowed,” the agency said.
“It is perfectly normal that some of the vaccines of the first generation applied previously are replaced by other immunizers, as with other vaccines regularly updated”, completes Anvisa.
Currently, vaccination campaigns are focused on Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine, which offers greater protection compared to variants of the original virus.
Did they disappear from the posts?
According to the government, AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines follow as part of the national immunization scheme. The Ministry of Health states that they are “indicated for people aged 40 and over, according to scientific evidence”.
However, the application of these two immunizers has significantly decreased, currently corresponding to less than 5,000 daily doses. In the same period last year, these vaccines amounted to almost 200,000 doses applied daily.
According to Anvisa, the doses of the two manufacturers being less used today corresponds to an update of the immunization strategy against Covid.
The agency clarifies that, since 2020, it has been monitoring the potential risks of “thromboembolic events with thrombocytopenia”, a precaution that entered the AstraZeneca package insert in April 2021.
After all, vaccines caused thrombosis?
Although the ministry admits that there are risks of thrombotic events after the application of immunizers, it also points out that occurrences are rare and “occur, on average, one in every 100,000 doses applied, presenting a significantly lower risk than that of complications caused by the Covid infection. -19”.
One document published last year showed that, by April 2022, twelve people had died as a result of thrombotic syndromes that could have been triggered by vaccination. Nine of them after using the AstraZeneca vaccine and three after the Janssen vaccine. In half of the cases analyzed, it was not possible to establish direct cause and effect.
Should I be concerned?
Janssen and AstraZeneca vaccines are made with the same viral vector technology. In a way not yet well explained by science, there is the possibility that this type of immunizer triggers thrombosis, an event that is more frequent in women.
The adverse effect, however, is usually presented soon after the application and may appear, at most, up to one month after the applied dose.
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