Sask. to follow NACI advice, suspends AstraZeneca shots for people under 55

The Saskatchewan government said Monday it will be pausing the use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for people under the age of 55.

The government said it planned to follow the recommendation from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, which is calling on AstraZeneca to review the safety of its vaccine.

Saskatchewan is to receive a shipment of 46,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from the United States this week. Those doses all are destined for people 55 and over after the NACI’s recommendation Monday.

“The primary use of AstraZeneca in Saskatchewan to date was at the drive-through clinic in Regina, with more than 15,000 doses available to residents 58 years and older,” the government said in a media release.

“Some residents younger than 55 would have received AstraZeneca including eligible health-care workers and vaccinators, though no thrombosis-like adverse events have been reported in Saskatchewan to date.”

Meanwhile, Health Canada is demanding that AstraZeneca do a detailed study on the risks and benefits of its 19 vaccine across multiple age groups after getting more reports that patients in Europe developed blood clots following vaccination.

The agency says it has not received any reports of blood clots in Canada to date.

The regulators that review and authorize vaccines are not pulling AstraZeneca’s approval in Canada but say regulatory changes could still be made depending on what the results of this study show.

“Health Canada’s guidance issued to health-care practitioners last week still stands, and provides vaccine recipients with information on the signs and symptoms to monitor for following vaccination,” a statement from Health Canada issued Monday says.

Last week, the department changed its label on the vaccine to warn about the rare risk of blood clots.

NACI provides advice to the provinces on how approved vaccines should be used in the context of the entire number of vaccines available. Provincial governments decide on their own how to use a vaccine, but several announced on Monday plans to stop using it on people under 55, including Prince Edward Island and Quebec.

A briefing with NACI and Health Canada doctors was planned for Monday afternoon to explain the details to Canadians.

Health Minister Patty Hajdu says Health Canada has been monitoring data very closely following reports of adverse effects in other jurisdictions.

“I can tell you that they’ll be updated messaging from Health Canada and NACI regarding onward use of AstraZeneca and who it might be appropriate for,” she said, at an unrelated news conference Monday morning.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was approved for all people over 18 on Feb. 26, but NACI then said there weren’t enough seniors included in clinical trials to be confident about how the vaccine would perform on people over the age of 65.

Two weeks later, NACI retracted that advice, citing new real-world evidence from the United Kingdom that showed the vaccine was very effective when used on seniors.

This latest recommendation follows reports in Europe that about three dozen patients developed blood clots following immunization with the AstraZeneca vaccine, most of them younger women.

Canada received 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca, made at the Serum Institute of India, but it’s not clear how many have been managed to date. Many provinces prioritized their use for people aged 60 to 64, but some focused on younger groups.

— With files from The Canadian Press