A health ministry panel on Friday approved AstraZeneca PLC’s COVID-19 vaccine for people age 40 and over, with Japan aiming to accelerate its rollout of shots amid a dearth of supplies among some local governments and a surge in new cases.
The vaccine obtained the health ministry’s approval for emergency use in late May, but it was not immediately used because the government had been weighing whether to place age restrictions on it following reports of very rare blood clots overseas — a development that forced more than a dozen countries to halt or restrict its use at one point.
Besides Japan, the U.K. is the only country that has determined that only people under 40 should be given an alternative to the AstraZeneca shot, which was developed by the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish firm. Twenty countries including Austria and Taiwan have been administering the shot to people age 18 and over, while Canada and Greece use it for those 30 and older, according to the health ministry. Still, more than a dozen countries including South Korea, Germany and France have a higher age restriction, with the level being set at anywhere from age 50 to 69.
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