Q: Why can’t older people be given an alternative vaccine too? Some countries are not giving the AZ vaccine to the under-55s or the under-60s. Are they being too cautious?
Lim says every country has to make their own decisions. They take into account factors like the amount of Covid they have, the vaccines they have, and the amount of risk people will accept.
In some countries life expectancy will be much lower than in the UK. That means their assessment of risk will be different, he says.
He says, for the UK, they decided it was best to set the threshold at around the age of 30.
He says they do not know yet if this rare condition is related to one vaccine, or to several. And he says it may be linked to Covid, and not to the vaccine at all.
Van-Tam says the JCVI was free to make its own recommendation. It was free to decide what it wanted.
He says in the 40 to 49 age group, not using the AZ vaccine would avert 0.5 harms per 100,000 people. But it could risk an extra 51.5 ICU admissions. He says it would have been “absurd” to stop using the vaccine on people in that age group in those circumstances.