The head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has urged calm about the death of two men after they received COVID vaccines, saying while investigations into both deaths are ongoing, the current evidence "doesn't suggest a likely association".
Professor John Skerritt said around 11,000 adverse "events" after vaccines had been reported to the TGA and ranged from people experiencing sore arms, to suffering heart attacks.
He said both patients had "various clotting disorders" and it was believed they both received the AstraZeneca vaccine.
"We do have to remember that, sadly, every week in Australia, 3,000 people die of all sorts of causes," he said.
"We also have to remember that in reporting cases of people presenting in hospitals with clots or to their GP, 50 Australians each day report to hospitals with serious blood clots."
Professor Skerritt said blood clots were "one of the more significant causes" of deaths in Australia and it was important to recognise authorities were not seeing a "flood" of cases.
He sought once again to ask people not to jump to conclusions given the extremely rare nature of the blood clots associated with the vaccine.
"It is a very rare and specific syndrome," he said.
His comments come after two men died days after receiving a coronavirus vaccination in New South Wales.
Vaccine 'best way out' of pandemic
Health authorities previously said there had been an increase in vaccine hesitancy in younger groups since the government changed its advice and recommended anyone under 50 receive the Pfizer vaccine because of the risks of rare clots linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Professor Skerritt said it was ultimately an individual decision, but he hoped people would think about the risks compared to the benefits of being vaccinated.
"I had the AstraZeneca vaccine because I have a chronic respiratory condition, and I know I would become extremely sick or certainly end up in intensive care if I got COVID, so these are individual decisions," he said.
"Versus the situation that unless we decide to live in a country that will never open our borders, unless we decide to never return to our normal activities, the vaccine still remains — along with other measures — the best way out of this pandemic."
Another 173,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 707,000 of locally produced AstraZeneca vaccine have been released today.
A total of two million doses have now been administered.
