Multiple European countries have now suspended use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, because of scattered reports of rare clotting disorders following vaccination. In all the talk of “precautionary” approaches the urgency of the situation seems to be suddenly ignored. Every vaccine triggers serious side effects in some small number of individuals, occasionally fatal, and we recognise that in special systems for compensating the victims. It seems worth considering, when looking at the possibility of several-in-a-million complications, how many lives may be lost because of delayed vaccinations.
I start with the case fatality rate (CFR) from this metaanalysis, and multiply them by the current overall weekly case rate, which is 1.78 cases/thousand population in the EU (according to data from the ECDC). This ignores the differences between countries, and differences between age groups in infection rate, and certainly underestimates the infection rate for obvious reasons of selective testing.
| Age group | 0-34 | 35-44 | 45-54 | 55-64 | 65-74 | 75-84 | 85+ |
| CFR (per thousand) | 0.04 | 0.68 | 2.3 | 7.5 | 25 | 85 | 283 |
| Expected fatalities per week per million population | 0.07 | 1.2 | 4.1 | 13 | 45 | 151 | 504 |
| Number of days delay to match VFR | 1200 | 70 | 20 | 6.4 | 1.8 | 0.6 | 0.2 |
Let’s assume now that all of the blood clotting problems that have occurred in the EEA — 30 in total, according to this report — among the 5 million receiving the AZ vaccine were actually caused by the vaccine, and suppose (incorrectly) that all of those people had died.* That would produce a vaccine fatality rate (VFR) of 6 per million. We can double that to account for possible additional unreported cases, or other kinds of complications that have not yet been recognised. We can then calculate how many days of delay would cause as many extra deaths as the vaccine itself might cause.
The result is fairly clear: even the most extreme concerns raised about the AZ vaccine could not justify even a one-week delay in vaccination, at least among the population 55 years old and over. (I am also ignoring here the compounding effect of onward transmission prevented by vaccination, which makes the delay even more costly.) As is so often the case, “abundance of caution” turns out to be the opposite of cautious.
* I’m using only European data here, to account for the contention that there may be a specific problem with European production of the vaccine. The UK has used much more of the AZ vaccine, with even fewer problems.
Common Infirmities 