New data: Unusual with serious side effects of the covid vaccine

Vaccinations against covid-19 save lives.

Since the turn of the year, only a few fully vaccinated people have received intensive care or died with covid.

Almost 70 percent of the adult population in Sweden is fully vaccinated.

But concerns about side effects still leave some doubting.

5600 serious cases - just under half a per mille

SVT has taken note of data that the Medical Products Agency will publish tomorrow.

The authority has received almost 73,000 reports of suspected side effects.

The absolute majority are about non-serious, usually transient, reactions - such as headache, fever and fatigue. 

Of the approximately 12.5 million vaccine doses given in Sweden, just under half a per mille has generated serious side effects.

These are 5,600 suspected cases.

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We continuously make an assessment of these vaccines and we see that the benefits with them continue to consider possible risks, says the Medical Products Agency's head of drug safety, Veronica Arthurson.

Has anything stuck out or surprised you in the reports?

-Partly the side effect consisting of blood clots and low levels of platelets that has been found to have a causal relationship with AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Another example is the cases of inflammation of the heart muscle and pericardium, which have been found to have a causal relationship with the mRNA vaccines, ie Moderna's and Pfizer-BioNTech's covid vaccine.

More side effects for AstraZeneca vaccine

In terms of number of doses, there have been 3.5 to 4 more reports of suspected serious side effects for AstraZeneca's vaccine than for Pfizer-BioNTech's and Moderna's vaccine.

Veronica Arthurson has no clear answer as to why this is so.

"I believe that the negative attention that AstraZeneca's vaccine has received since it was approved may have contributed," she says.

287 reported deaths

287 deaths have been received.

The Medical Products Agency's review shows that there are extremely few deaths that really have a probable connection to the vaccine.

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 These are two to three cases where people have suffered from blood clots and low levels of platelets after receiving Astra Zeneca's vaccine.

-The risks of suffering from an unusual side effect are extremely small, especially in relation to the benefit that these vaccines provide in the form that they protect against serious disease.