Covishield could cause blood clots in very rare cases: AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca spoke about TTS in court documents following a suit brought against the company in the United Kingdom.

Global pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has said that its AZD1222 vaccine against Covid-19, which was made under licence in India as Covishield, could cause low platelet counts and formation of blood clots in “very rare” cases.

AstraZeneca has accepted a link between the vaccine and Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS), a medical condition characterised by abnormally low levels of platelets and the formation of blood clots.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine formula was licensed to Pune-based vaccine maker Serum Institute of India (SII) during the coronavirus pandemic for the manufacture of Covishield. More than 175 crore doses of Covishield have been administered in India.

What has led AstraZeneca to make this submission? What is known about the vaccines and TTS? And should Indians who received Covishield shots be worried?

AstraZeneca spoke about TTS in court documents following a suit brought against the company in the United Kingdom.

The pharmaceutical giant is being sued over health claims related to the vaccine that it developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford amid the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

The UK-based media organisation reported recently that a “case was lodged last year by Jamie Scott, a father of two, who was left with a permanent brain injury after developing a blood clot and a bleed on the brain that has prevented him from working after he received the vaccine in April 2021”.

The report said that in all, “fifty-one cases have been lodged in the High Court (in the UK), with victims and grieving relatives seeking damages estimated to be worth up to £100 million”.