AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs have caused rare blood clots but scientists say they can be redesigned to avoid problem
A team of German scientists believe that they have worked out why some people given the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines against Covid-19 develop blood clots – and claim they can tell the manufacturers how to improve the vaccine to avoid it.
The key is in the adenovirus – the common cold virus that is used to deliver the spike protein of the coronavirus into the body, say Rolf Marschalek, a professor at Goethe university in Frankfurt, and colleagues. The mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna do not use this delivery system and there have been no blood clotting cases linked to them.
