CDC Director Varensky said at the day’s White House briefing on epidemic preparedness that the U.S. has seen an average of 63,000 additional infections per day over the past week, up 2.3 percent from the previous week, and that a variant of the virus originating in the United Kingdom has become dominant. But the number of vaccines delivered also continued to rise, up 8 percent from the previous week.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that the new coronavirus vaccine will be available to all adults over the age of 18 starting April 19, two weeks ahead of the original goal. Since Biden took office, 150 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the United States.
On Wednesday, the European Medicines Agency officially acknowledged that the AstraZeneca vaccine has indeed been linked to a number of previously reported cases of blood clots.
EMA Executive Director Cook: “The PRAC (European Medicines Agency Safety Committee) has concluded after a very in-depth analysis that clotting abnormalities following vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine should be classified as a possible side effect of the vaccine.”
Members of the German vaccine committee then said that clotting abnormalities, such as blood clots, can be 20 times more likely after an AstraZeneca vaccination at the same age.
Still, the European Medicines Agency emphasized that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing the new coronavirus outweighed the risk of side effects overall.
Once the adverse news broke, the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) then recommended that for adults under the age of 30 with no underlying disease, it would be best to replace the AstraZeneca vaccine with another vaccine.
However, health officials also said that alternative vaccines for adults under 30 years of age only would not affect the overall vaccine program in the UK.
The British Prime Minister also reassured that the UK’s unblocked program, will not be affected by the AstraZeneca vaccine.
British Prime Minister Johnson: “I don’t see any reason at this point to think we need to deviate from the decontainment program.”
Germany notified 9,677 infections on Wednesday, with a cumulative total of more than 2.91 million cases, but the actual number of infections could be higher due to the delay in counting over Easter. A German government spokesman said the same day that Chancellor Angela Merkel supports the imposition of a tougher short-term embargo because of the high rate of infection.
Japan notified 2,031 confirmed cases on Wednesday, with a record 878 new cases in Osaka Prefecture, accounting for 43 percent of the country. The Osaka government declared a state of medical emergency that day, and the torch relay scheduled to pass through Osaka next week was rescheduled to take place at Weber Memorial Park, and spectators were not allowed to watch the event live.
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