New Delhi: Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that the study of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has made it clear that getting the corona vaccine has not increased the risk of sudden death among young people and adults in India. He said, ‘In fact, this study of ICMR shows that the possibility of such deaths is less due to the corona vaccine.’ In this report, ICMR has tried to dispel the fears that the untimely deaths of young people and adults in India during the last few years were related to corona vaccination.
ICMR’s National Institute of Epidemiology conducted this study on those persons in the age group of 18-45 years, who were healthy and did not have any disease and died suddenly due to unexplained reasons between October 1, 2021 and March 31, 2023. This research was conducted in 47 hospitals in 19 states and union territories. During the research, 729 such cases were sampled who had died suddenly and 2916 samples were those who were saved after having a heart attack. The findings of the research showed that taking at least one dose or two doses of the Kovid-19 vaccine significantly reduces the chances of sudden death without any reason.
The research has also identified several factors that increase the risk of sudden death, including the deceased’s Kovid-19 hospitalization, sudden death of someone in the family before, excessive drinking 48 hours before death, drug use and very high physical activity (exercise in the gym) 48 hours before death. Union Health Minister JP Nadda said that the ICMR study has made it clear that there is no link between Kovid-19 vaccination and sudden deaths of young adults. Instead, factors such as history of Kovid-19 hospitalization, history of such sudden deaths in the family, and some lifestyle behaviors were found to be responsible for increasing the chances of such deaths.
The Union Health Minister said that a strong surveillance system called ‘Adverse Event Following Immunization’ (AEFI) has been created to track the side effects of vaccination. He said that anaphylaxis kits are made available at vaccination centers and after vaccination the person is mandatorily kept under observation for 30 minutes. To increase awareness about AEFI, Nadda said that guidelines have been issued to the states to increase the reporting of cases related to vaccine side effects. The government is also using social media to spread awareness.
Let us tell you that the matter of side effects of Kovid vaccine had also reached the Supreme Court. On October 14 this year, the Supreme Court dismissed the petitions alleging side-effects like blood clotting due to the corona vaccine. A bench of then Chief Justice (CJI) Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Mishra had said that these petitions were filed only to create sensation. Allegations of alleged side effects of the Covid vaccine gained momentum when British pharma company AstraZeneca admitted in the court there in April this year that its Covid-19 vaccine – Covishield could cause side effects. However, the company also said that this would happen only in very rare cases. Let us tell you that Serum Institute of India produced Covishield vaccine in India using the formula developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca. However, Serum Institute had claimed that no case of side effects of Covishield vaccine has been reported in India. In the documents submitted to the British court, AstraZeneca had admitted that its corona vaccine could cause thrombosis thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) in one case out of 10 lakh. In this case, blood clots form in the body and the platelet count drops significantly.
