India reports 180 deaths after COVID-19 vaccination till March 31
In all, 492 severe and serious AEFI have been classified by the AEFI Secretariat of the Immunisation Technical Support Unit (ITSU) at the Health Ministry. Classification has been completed for 124 deaths, 305 serious events that required hospitalisation, and 63 severe events that did not require hospitalisation.
FollowThe number of deaths following Covid-19 vaccinations in India doubled to 180 as of March 29 from about two weeks earlier, according to a presentation made to the National Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) committee.
In other serious adverse events too, the overwhelming majority took place in the three-day window. Even as AEFI deaths are reported daily, causality assessment by the National AEFI Committee appears to be lagging with information about just 10 deaths in the public domain.
In all, 492 severe and serious AEFI have been classified by the AEFI Secretariat of the Immunisation Technical Support Unit (ITSU) at the Health Ministry. Classification has been completed for 124 deaths, 305 serious events that required hospitalisation, and 63 severe events that did not require hospitalisation.
More than half of the deaths were categorised as acute coronary syndrome/myocardial infarction cases, resulting from reduced blood flow to the heart, with 78% of them (49 of 63 deaths) having occurred within three days of vaccination. The analysis showed that 15% of the deaths were due to cerebrovascular accidents, or strokes. The two categories together accounted for 65% of the deaths analysed.
“This may represent strong temporal associations and calls for a thorough investigation (since cases may not be explainable by background rates as these AEFIs would have spread out over days from inoculation if merely coincidental events),” said Malini Aisola, co-convenor of the All India Drugs Action Network (AIDAN).
Public health activists who have been tracking adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) in the ongoing covid vaccination effort have repeatedly sought greater transparency in AEFI investigations and more rapid causality assessments to help inform vaccination policy.
However, in many cases post mortems have not been conducted. For example, in at least six out of 10 cases where the National AEFI Committee has completed causality assessment, no post mortem has been done, says Malini Aisola, a Public Health Researcher based in Delhi.
“The majority of reported AEFIs occurring soon after doing may also represent a reporting bias as events happening after the initial few days could be getting missed out,” said Malini Aisola, a public health activist. She added that since Covishield is the same vaccine as the AstraZeneca one, warnings related to the rare conditions flagged by EMA, information for vaccine recipients and the public about when to seek medical attention, and information for health providers about how to identify and treat such occurrences needs to be done for Covishield too.
