Anyone in Germany who has received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and is under the age of 60 will receive a different vaccine for their second dose.

Under 60s to receive different second dose

On March 30, Germany announced that it would no longer offer the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under the age of 60. Now, federal and regional health ministers have decided that anyone under the age of 60 who received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine before March 30 will be offered either the BioNTech-Pfizer or Moderna vaccine for their second jab.

The decision complies with the recommendations that were released last week by Germany’s vaccine commission. The commission also recommended that the second injection should be given to people 12 weeks after receiving their first AstraZeneca dose.

According to the German health ministry, around 2,2 million people under the age of 60 have received the vaccine in recent weeks.

The risk of blood clots

Germany made the decision to stop offering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under the age of 60, due to blood clots being discovered in a small number of younger people who had previously received the vaccine.

Blood clots in AstraZeneca recipients is a rare occurrence. According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), only 222 cases of atypical thromboses were recorded across the European Economic Area (which includes the EU, Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein) and Britain, whilst 34 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered, as of April 4. The EMA has since said that blood clots should be listed as a possible, but rare, side effect of the vaccine but stressed that the overall benefit of combatting the coronavirus outweighs the associated risks.

The World Health Organisation has said, due to a lack of data regarding the effects, that it cannot recommend switching between two different vaccines.