up to date with what's happening on the ground in the ward and in the lab now more than ever the world needs w.h.o. making healthy a world for you. to everyone. the air. the air. findings soon release on a possible link between astra zeneca is covert 19 shots and rare blood squads with implications for vaccine programs worldwide it's. where i am here and this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up a relentless crackdown in myanmar reports that once again security forces are

killing protesters across the country. some challenges remain but a step in the right direction as well paris try to salvage the 2015 a rainy nuclear deal and. i'm going to see a new in south central chile and coming up i'll explain why indigenous lying grabs and political violence are escalating out of control in this region. health regulators from the u.k. and the european union are about to reveal if they see any links between astra zeneca has called it 1000 vaccine and where blood clots those clots for friends in just a handful of the 10s of millions of people who have been given the job but many countries have raised concerns south korea is the latest to temporarily suspend its use in people under the age of 60 i don't choose to eat the university of oxford holds the

trial of the vaccine in children saying that this was just a precautionary measure let's go live very soon attash a buckler she's joining me from paris where she will be monitoring the in. from the european medicines agency. that's asher this is spin a story that's been percolating you could say for several weeks and months now. we wait for an announcement on just how safe this vaccine is just give us a sense of why it's so important to find out which vaccines countries in europe should be using. well it's very important because of course the european medical agency governments across europe need to convince their public that the vaccines they are using are safe i should just say as the we are waiting for that press and that press conference by the

european medical agency on the safety of the astra zeneca vaccine but there are some reports coming out already that suggest that what we might hear from the may is that they have indeed found some links between the astra zeneca vaccine and rare forms of blood clots however on balance we understand that the m.d.m.a. is expected to say that the benefits of the astra zeneca vaccine outweigh the risks and what they would mean by that is something that many doctors have been saying over the past few weeks and that is that the risk of 19 to a person's health possibly 2 to possibly of course people could die from cove 19 those risks outweigh the risks of some very rare blood clots linked as we've heard reported to the astra zeneca vaccine so i think this is what we're expecting to hear from the m a as i say those reports are unconfirmed but we are hearing a bit of information just before that press conference begins. certainly prince

governments in europe in quite a tricky situation really because many governments in europe have been relying on the vaccine to jump starts if you like their vaccine which have been fairly sluggish across europe not the what's the kind of situation when it comes to vaccination across the e.u. . org what we're expecting all of the announcements from the european medical agency is a meeting of european union health menace ministers now they'll be looking out the report of the darts at the announcement from the e m a they'll be going over that of course and then reporting back to their respective governments but you would imagine that health ministers will try to urge their governments are to continue to pass on the message to their populations that the benefits so will outweigh the risks in the astra zeneca vaccine the people should

continue to take it especially as certainly countries in the european union are battling a 3rd wave of this covello. demick and that's our show i'm afraid i'm going to have to cut you off there are we are not getting that press conference from amsterdam let's listen in of the assessment my name is mary agnes china and i'm the head of a miscommunication department. i'm very delighted to have to do this is even coop the executive director of the european medicines agency dr sabina stroh's the chair of the i'm a safety committee to from a convergence risk assessment committee process and dr peter arnett the head of analytics and a who can provide additional information about the review in the scientific evidence it was based on. before we start i want to explain how we plan to run this press briefing. so please note that your microphone is disabled by default for the

duration of the press briefing we would 1st hear short remarks of mrs crewe conduct a stroke and after that we will have half an hour about 4 questions once the question answer session starts please raise your hand in their breaks if you want to raise a question. today's briefing is broadcast near you tube and europe i said tonight the footage can be used free of charge by all media and you will find the respective ling's in the invite sent earlier today without further delay i'm now handed over to mrs cook the executive director of mrs cooper please. thank you very much mrs china good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us again for this press briefing 1st of all i want to start by stating that our safety committee the pharmacovigilance and risk assessment committee of the european medicines agency has confirmed that the benefits of the astra zeneca

vaccine in preventing cope with 19 overall outweigh the risks of side effects covert 19 is a very serious disease with high hospitalized patients and that creates an every day covert is still causing thousands of that across the e.u. this vaccine has proven to be highly effective it prevents if severe difficulties and hospitalisation and it is saving lives vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against cope at 19 and we need to use the back scenes we have to protect us from the devastating effects. the prog after and very in-depth analysis has concluded that the reported cases of unusual blood clotting following vaccination with the astra zeneca vaccine should be listed as possible side effects of the vaccine. as we communicated last week we

convened an ad hoc expert group composed of experts from a range of medical speciality is including a mythologists neurologist epidemiologists and viral which is. based on the current available evidence specific risk factors such as age gender or previous medical history of clotting disorders have not been able to be confirmed as the rarest and ribands are seen in all ages and in men and women. a plausible explanation for these rare side events is that it is an immune response to the vaccine leading to a condition similar to one seen sometimes in patients treated with heparin it's called heparin and use trumbo cited peña and dr strife strauss will give us more details from the fs mint. in may is working very closely with the national

competence authorities in all the e.u. member states and the company to make sure that these risks are proactively communicated to health care professionals it's important that both vaccinated people and health care professionals are aware of the signs and symptoms of these unusual blood clotting disorders so that they could be spotted quickly to minimize any possible risks we will continue to monitor the scientific evidence available on both effectiveness and safety of all the authorized scope of 19 vaccines and we will issue further recommendations if necessary on the grounds of science and robust evidence this case clearly demonstrates one of the challenges posed by large scale vaccination campaigns when millions of people receive these knock scenes very rare events can occur that were not identified during the clinical trials the role

of pharmacovigilance the monitoring of the side effects is to help us to rapidly detect and analyze these risks and their impact on the benefit risk profile of the vaccine. this case also shows us that our pharmacovigilance system is working these very rare and unusual events have been picked up identified analyzed and have allowed us to come to science based recommendations to allow the safe and effective use of this faxing him a scientific assessment we've continued to to work on all recommendations around this vaccine. any national decision on the optimal use in vaccination campaigns will also take into account the pandemic situation in any individual country and other factors such as hospitalized patients availability of vaccines. so thank you very much for joining us today and i'm now very pleased to hand over

to the chair of our pharmacovigilance and risk assessment committee dr sabrina strauss. thank you very much. and good afternoon over the past few weeks the from a coverage less risk assessment committee proc that i chair has analyzed reports of blood clots and people who received the covert 1000 facts seen as true seneca as ms cook says the product has confirmed that overall benefits of the vaccine for masters in a car and preventing covert 900 are well established and the risks are very rare the product has conducted a very thorough review of the reports of rare and unusual blood clotting events in combination with slow clot low blood platelets with the help of an actual ad hoc expert group that looked at the data in crete great detail the committee has

carried out a detailed review of the $62.00 cases of cerebral finis sinus trumbo says and $24.00 cases of splenetic trumbull's is in the european union drug safety database you have written and as of march 22. and 18 of these cases of these cases were fatal the cases came mainly from reporting systems of the european economic area and the u.k. . i can provide you also with more recent figures as of april 24 2021 the e.u. drug safety database had received a total of $169.00 cases of c.v.s. city and $53.00 of varying trumbo says and at that moment 34000000 people were vaccinated in the european economic area and the u.k.

the more recent data did not change any of the proc recommendations after extensive discussions within the committee and taking into account the findings of the expert group our conclusion is that these clotting disorders are very rare side effects of the vaccine this conclusion is based on the details clinical mechanistic and it became a logical assessment including a distinct clinical petron in the logical findings and observation of more reported cases than would be expected from the background rates of these unusual conditions . the currently available data did not allow us to identify a definite course for these complications however plausible plausible explanations have been put forward including an immune response that leads to a condition that seem similar to an atypical happening and used to piña it.

no specific risk factors could be identified based on the current data the committee can therefore not recommend any specific measures to reduce the risk most of the cases occurred in individuals below 60 years of age and in women but because of the different ways the vaccine is being used in the different countries the committee did not conclude that age and gender were clear risk factors for these very rare side effects. importantly further research and analysis will of this important issue will take place the manufacturer astra zeneca will have to conduct studies and research has been commissioned by may to further investigate these reactions the committee will continue to assess all evidence that becomes available on this issue while the vaccination campaigns continue. it is of great

importance that health care professionals and people coming for vaccination are aware of these risks and look out for possible signs or symptoms that usually occur in the 1st 2 weeks following for explanation this includes for example shortness of breath chest pain swelling in the leg persistent abdominal pain neurological symptoms including severe or persistent headache or blur attrition and skin losing beyond the sight of injection. the product information will be updated to reflect these new findings and. will this will be added as an adverse drug reaction to the product information and it will also include warnings i would like to thank all the colleagues that have worked very very hard round the clock to provide a comprehensive review of all the evidence that was available to the committee and

for the assessment which was both rapid and robust. the collaboration between the colleagues from the national competent authorities and the european medicines agency as well as with the scientific expert was extremely productive. this review shows that in europe there is a strong from could reach an insistence that can promptly detect and analyze any adverse event even the very rare ones and take appropriate action and i would like to take the opportunity here to stress again the importance of reporting of any suspected side effect it is based on the reports from health care professionals and from people actually made it very hard but the initial findings there from the european medicines agency they have concluded that there is a possible link to very rare cases of unusual blood courts as a result of you saying astra zeneca scored 19 vaccine but also keen to stress that

the benefits of using the vaccine i weigh any risk of contracting itself and the tasha popular has also following that press from a she joins us from paris. this is going to have implications in europe where skepticism has been expressed about using a rolling out best vaccine what was your main takeaway from that press announcement . well the big message from the european medical agency years as you say that the benefits of the astra zeneca vaccine far outweigh the risks associated with it now what that means in the words of the year may is that covert 19 is far more of a risk to the average person getting a vaccination and then that of blood clots nevertheless they did find

a link between the astra zeneca vaccine and some very unusual rare cases of blood clots in fact we were given some figure we were told that in over 34000000 people there were vaccinated in the european union and in the u.k. 164 cases of these rare forms of blood clots were found and the conclusion from the e m a is that these are simply very rare indeed that they should be listed as possible side effects to the vaccines that help workers and people should know that they do exist and should look out for any warning signs once they have been vaccinated but nevertheless the message is that the vaccine campaign must continue particularly when so many countries in the european union are battling a 3rd wave where i say use in countries like france and germany are struggling and kovan infection cases continue to rise mainly fueled by the virus variance. is so likely to be any recommendations coming from the european union itself on

what to do with the speakers the year gives the advice overall to different countries in europe but as with most things during this pandemic a lot of countries are. to go with the law and how the implements which vaccination campaigns and who's getting them is are likely to be any kind of coordinated response following those press announcements will be different countries in europe likely proceed from. well european union health ministers are meeting in a short while to discuss the findings of the may and you'd imagine that they would put forward a coordinated response the message would be that the vaccination program must continue to be rolled out to has been coordinated at a european union level the problem is so much damage has been done in terms of the

public and the credibility of the astra zeneca vaccine because over the past few weeks and months we have had conflicting news about the vaccine the may the agency that gave its findings today just a month ago looked into the astra zeneca vaccine again program the vaccine was halted across several european countries was the medical agency verified whether or not it should continue to be used the use of the vaccine was resumed but people's the public opinion in terms of this vaccine has continued to be battered for example in france since january we've seen opinion polls suggest that now over 60 percent of people in france are very worried about getting the astra zeneca vaccine and they don't want it even last week in northern france some vaccination centers had to sharks because they were offering doses of astra zeneca and people in the locality didn't want to take it so those are the sort of problems that european governments will face now as they try to get the message across that look this

vaccine is safe the benefits outweigh the risks nevertheless they are facing a public feels particularly cynical when it comes to this vaccination. though they're going to let you had back to that presser but for now thank you very much indeed. the. we're going to take it out for all of europe to see the united states or for minneapolis policemen the desert shield inspired a trial has just resumes this is the 2nd week of witness testimony is prosecutors are laying out their case in murder george floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than 90 minutes let's listen in that suit that trial and hear from some a witness testimony on mr floyd's neck and lower and lower neck area as well this is rightly on the back of the brain and would the use of this composite exhibit 254

assist you in explaining your analysis of the specific force used by the defendant upon mr floyd during the restraint period that you've just defined is offer exhibit $254.00 and. no object. to the before is received may i ask you to publish exhibit 254. and now i'd like to do just in a little more detail if we could to get exhibit $254.00 in large the upper left photo 1st photo. again this is the milestone footage is that right yes and the time stamp is he 19 and 17 seconds as i write yes or can you please explain to the jury what this shows

relevant to your analysis relevant to my now says this shows where the officers initially removed mr foy from the did go in and they placed them in the proposition that you were evolving by the way to control things had to go. and focusing on her job. yes sir are you able to make out the relative position of his words. relative to mr floyd in that photo yes it appears there his knees are in a position where you live and by the way his left knee being in the neck area of the floor in his pocket this is a very busy news day here and i'll just say we're going to take you back to london where the british medicines and the health care regulator agency are holding their own briefing over these recent astra zeneca vaccine developments professor jonathan

found who is now speaking and taking questions let's listen in to see what he has to say today for us thank you professor i will now update on m h r a's rigorous scientific review of safety reports of very rare and specific blood clots with low platelet count thrombocytopenia associated with covert 19 vaccine astra zeneca over 20000000 doses of the a said vaccines have been given in the u.k. and we know that vaccines are the best way to protect people from covert 19 and have already saved thousands of lives and in fact around 6000 modeled in the u.k. by the end of february but no effective medicine or vaccine is without risk and with vaccines more complex than usual because the benefits can be to people other than the individual taking the vaccine while the clinical trials of vaccines allow

us to assess relatively common effects very rare effects are only detected when a vaccine is used at scale on a large enough number of people and that is why the u.k. has a careful monitoring systems in place and these monitoring systems are now detail. ting a potential side effect of the covert 900 vaccine astra zeneca in an extremely small number of people the evidence is firming up and our review has concluded that while it's a strong possibility more work is needed to establish beyond all doubt that the vaccine has caused these side effects our role is can to continually monitor safety during widespread use to confirm that the vaccines are performing as expected to identify any very rare side effects and to ensure the benefits outweigh the risks the public's safety is at the forefront of our minds our teams of safety experts

scientists clinicians and epidemiologists have investigated reviewed and evaluated thoroughly and scientifically all safety reports and our safety reviews are carried out in tandem with the vaccination program we've gathered a large amount of data on the safety profile of the available vaccines and we've done a rigorous scientific review of all the available data with regards to suspected blood clots with low platelet count the commission on human medicines expert working group has also met frequently and critically accessed all the data alongside our regulator review and this is also included a representatives and advice from leading hematology us. based on the current evidence the benefits of the covert 900 facts seen astra zeneca against covert 19 and its associated risks hospitalization and death continues to outweigh the risks

for the vast majority of people. our review has reinforced that the risk of this ressa specked its side effect remains extremely small by the 31st of march over 20000000 doses having been given we have had 79 case reports up to and including that date 31st of march all 79 cases occurred after the 1st dose of the 79 cases 19 people have sadly died these cases occurred in 51 women and 28 men age from 18 to 79 years and from these reports the risk of this type of red blood clot is about 4 people in the 1000000 who received the vaccine 3 out of the 19 were under 30 years 14 of the 19 were of the cerebral venous sinus from bosis with low platelets and 5

other kinds of thrombosis in major veins. the balance of benefits and risks is very favorable for older people but it is more finely balanced for the younger people and we at the mh are a are advising that this evolving evidence should be taken into account when considering how the vaccine is used today will be communicating information and advice to health care professionals on how to minimize risks and this will provide a lot of guidance including how to report any suspected cases the information for health care professionals will be updated and they will also be information for the public things to look out for as we continue to monitor this issue anyone who has symptoms for days after vaccination or more should seek prompt medical advice and new onset of a severe or persistent headache or blurred vision shortness of breath chest pain leg swelling persistent abdominal pain or indeed unusual skin bruising or pinpoint

spots on the injection site so professor 70 will outline the commission on human medicines further advice but i'd like to reiterate again that this is extremely rare and with the proven effectiveness against the disease that is still a huge risk to our population the balance of benefits and known risks of the vaccine is still very favorable for the vast majority of people. so professor samir over to you thank you very much. so i worked with the commission on human medicines and the expert working group separately to theory review all the cases coming in with the oxford astra zeneca vaccine in the u.k. we've taken into account a wide range of data sources we've looked at information about usage of the vaccine various age groups and updated incidence rates and benefit risk comparisons for

different populations by age and gender over the last couple of weeks the 2 committees have spent almost 24 hours in committee reviewing these reports each report has been carefully scrutinized by them and by the members of the working group and further information has been obtained where necessary we've also had independent adjudication of these cases by an expert team attala just and we worked with another group of human toll just to develop a case definition of these events to make sure that the cases were identified throughout the u.k. and reported via the yellow card scheme. based on the currently available data the commission has met since advising the following 1st pregnant woman should continue to discuss with the health care professional whether the benefits of having the vaccine outweigh the risks for them number 2.