Avoiding COVID-19 Vaccines Over Risk of Blood Clots Makes No Sense—Here’s Why

Reports of blood clots and a “pause” in administering one COVID-19 vaccine in the United States have strengthened some people’s resolve to hold off on getting a shot. The irony—and danger—of this stance has been made very clear in a study just released by the University of Oxford. According to the paper, risk for cerebral venous thrombosis due to COVID-19 infection is actually “many-fold” higher than it is from receiving the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine or the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. Drawing from a database of more than half a million COVID-19 patients, the authors note that CVT occurred in 39 per million people. Conversely, CVT has been reported to occur in around 5 people per million after a first dose of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and in 4 people per million with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Overall, they concluded, risk for CVT was roughly 10 times higher in patients with COVID-19 than in those who received one of the vaccines studied. They found a similar pattern in looking at portal vein thrombosis.