BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s vaccine committee, known as STIKO, plans to recommend Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine only for people over the age of 60, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Friday, citing no sources.
Europe’s drug regulator approved J&J’s vaccine last month after examining cases of a rare blood clotting issue in U.S. adults who received a dose. But it left it up to the European Union’s member states to decide how to use it.
A spokeswoman for the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases said the institute expects STIKO to make a recommendation on J&J’s vaccine next week. She declined to comment further.
Germany limited the shot from Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca to people over 60 after post-vaccination monitoring found rare – and sometimes fatal – cases of blood clotting, with younger women disproportionately affected.
Health Minister Jens Spahn announced on Thursday that Germany would make AstraZeneca available to all adults, regardless of age, to speed up its vaccination campaign.
The decision by the federal government follows moves by several German states to make AstraZeneca more widely available and comes as the pace of giving shots of mainstay vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna picks up.
(Reporting by Maria SheahanEditing by Riham Alkousaa and Thomas Escritt)
