B.C. temporarily suspends use of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for those under age 55; 2,518 new COVID-19 cases reported

BC is temporarily suspending use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for those under age 55 for the next few days.

The national advisory committee on immunization issued that recommendation today over concerns the vaccine may be linked to rare blood clots.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry calls the condition very rare and says it's unlikely any cases will be seen in Canada.

She says she anticipates more information in the next two to three days.

The province says there were 2,518new cases, pushing the total in the province past 98,000.

Six more people have died, raising that total to 1,455.

Dr. Henry is urging those aged 20 to 39 years old to curb their activities to protect their parents and neighbours.

Dr. Henry said, There have been 321 new confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern in our province, for a total of 2,233 cases. Of the total cases, 413 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 1,915 cases of the B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant, 48 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 270 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.

She added, "to date, 699,092 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 87,289 of which are second doses.