<p>NICOSIA, Cyprus &mdash; Cypriot health authorities on Wednesday advised people aged under 50 to use the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines that are based on the newer, mRNA technology. </p>
<p>The Health Ministry said the decision came after a majority recommendation by its panel of scientific advisers on COVID-19, following “reports of serious incidents concerning blood clots.”</p>
<p>It didn’t provide further details. Cypriot media have reported extensively on the death of a 39-year-old woman — allegedly from a brain hemorrhage — about two weeks after she received an AstraZeneca shot, although it wasn’t clear whether the jab was actually linked with her death.</p>
<p>The ministry’s advisory body also decided unanimously that people who have already got their first AstraZeneca shot and didn’t suffer serious side-effects such as blood clots must receive their follow-up jab, which the ministry said “is particularly significant for their protection from COVID-19 and its variants.”</p>
<p>Advisory body member Zoe Pana told private TV station ALPHA that the possibility of a person suffering a blood clot or other serious side-effect on their second AstraZeneca shot is minimal.</p>
<p>Earlier Wednesday, advisory body chief Constantinos Tsioutis told state broadcaster CyBC that some scientists had suggested sidelining the AstraZeneca vaccine altogether.</p>
<p>The Health Ministry has already sought guidance from the European Medicines Agency on whether the death of the 39-year-old British woman this week was definitively linked to the AstraZeneca jab. A small number of other incidents have been reported of blood clots developing in individuals who had earlier received an AstraZeneca shot.</p>
<p>Health officials say the rate of infection on the east Mediterranean island nation of approximately 900,000 has decreased largely because of the government’s hastened vaccination program. Some 50.4% of the population has so far received at least one vaccine shot while 23.7% have been fully vaccinated.</p>
<p>Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou said Cyprus expects delivery next month of 201,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, 24,000 doses of Moderna, 35,000 doses of Johnson &amp; Johnson and 90,000 doses of AstraZeneca.</p>
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