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(Adds background, expert comment)
April 14 (Reuters) - China's CanSino Biologics Inc
said on Wednesday that no serious blood clot cases
had been reported in people inoculated with its single-dose
COVID-19 vaccine.
U.S. federal health agencies recommended on Tuesday that use
of a similar one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson be
paused after six women developed rare blood clots.
CanSinoBIO's shares fell as much as 13.7% and 18.4% in
Shanghai and Hong Kong respectively.
They pared losses to close down 6.3% and 7.7% each after the
company issued a statement in which it said: "No blood clot
related serious adverse events have been reported in around one
million vaccinations of Ad5-nCoV."
CanSinoBIO's Ad5-nCoV vaccine is approved in China, Hungary,
Chile and Pakistan.
European regulators this month said they had found a
possible link between AstraZeneca Plc's vaccine and a
similar rare blood clotting problem.
Several countries have since limited the AstraZeneca
vaccine's use to certain age groups, while the European
Medicines Agency (EMA) said the benefits outweigh the risks.
Experts said clotting risks for both vaccines remain
extremely low and they are highly effective in providing
protection against COVID-19, amid concern that reports of the
rare side effects could deter people from getting their shots.
"There are other vaccines in clinical use where rare side
effects are reported – rotavirus, measles, yellow fever. Yet the
vaccines save hundreds of thousands of lives," said Jerome Kim,
director general of the International Vaccine Institute.
"We are looking at rare events ... Countries need to assess
the risk of vaccination against the known risk of not
vaccinating."
COVID-19 vaccines from J&J, AstraZeneca, CanSinoBIO and
Russia's Gamaleya Institute uses an adenovirus, a harmless cold
virus, as a vector to deliver instructions for human cells to
produce part of the coronavirus that can spur the immune system
to recognise and attack the actual virus.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo in Beijing, Shashwat
Awasthi in Bengaluru; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Jason Neely)
