–Dr. Anthony says

WEEKS after concerns were raised that a few people developed blood clots after taking the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony said that there have been no reported local incidents. Since the local vaccination rollout began in February, Guyana has been using the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The country was able to secure a total of 107,000 doses of this specific vaccine.
“We were satisfied that when we used it in Guyana, we did not have any cases of blood-clotting and we have been monitoring these cases. We are very pleased with the results that we have been having so far and we’ll continue to use them,” the health minister said during his daily COVID-19 update on Thursday.
Numerous countries suspended the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccines after 30 cases of rare blood clots were discovered out of a total of more than 20 million people, who received the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe.

This led to investigations by the World Health Organization (WHO) and European Medicines Agency (EMA), which subsequently concluded that the vaccines do not result in an increased overall risk of blood clots and that the benefits of using the vaccines to prevent persons from getting the disease, COVID-19, outweigh the risks.
“COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is not associated with an increased overall risk of blood- clotting disorders. There have been very rare cases of unusual blood clots accompanied by low levels of blood platelets (components that help blood to clot) after vaccination,” the EMA said.
With the blood clots only being recorded in a small number of people, Dr. Anthony said that if there was an issue with the vaccine, the global regulatory authorities would flag the vaccine and ask countries to stop using it.

More recently, in April, the WHO in reviewing the latest evidence on the blood clots noted that a “very rare” new type of adverse event called Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS), which involved unusual and severe blood-clotting events associated with low platelet counts has been reported after vaccination with the two AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.
Given that the international authorities emphasise that the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks and Guyana has not received any reports of these reactions, Minister Anthony encouraged all those persons who have to receive their second dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to come forward and take it.