Addressing a press conference, the Delhi Health Minister raised concerns about the central government's continuing promotion of this vaccine despite such risks, highlighting issues of blood clots and falling platelet counts leading to heart attacks.
The Opposition Congress has also questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence over the issue.
AstraZeneca submitted before a UK court that its Covid vaccine Covishield can cause rare side effects.
AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, has reported that its antibody medication 'Evusheld' is effective against Covid-19's novel vaccine-evading Omicron strain.
Imperial scientists had aimed to use the technology to design a Covid-19 jab. However, it never progressed further than stage two clinical testing.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the decision, saying that the EU's vaccination programme was built on a sound legal basis
The analysis suggests that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96 per cent effective against hospitalisation after two doses, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92 per cent effective against hospitalisation after two doses.
The clarification came after Marco Cavaleri, head of the EMA's vaccine strategy, was quoted as saying by an Italian newspaper that the vaccine shots should not be administered to people aged over 60 and younger age groups amid fears over very rare blood clotting.
While Covishield and Covaxin may not be accepted in many countries, should they not pass muster within India? Yet even fully vaccinated and healthy citizens need a negative RT-PCR report to travel to several states including West Bengal and Punjab.
The reports which looked into the issue of blood clots linked to AstraZeneca jabs were published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
