CUMBRIAN health heavyweights have moved to quell concerns over AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine after blood clot fears were raised.

Colin Cox, the county’s director of public health, and Dr John Campbell, an academic from Carlisle, have described the decision of nations like Germany, France, Italy and Spain, to halt jabs, as ‘strange’ and ‘baffling’.

More than 17m people in the UK and EU already had the jab, with 15 cases of deep vein thrombosis and 22 cases of pulmonary embolism reported, as of March 8.

In a YouTube talk on Monday, Dr Campbell, a former A&E volunteer and nurse lecturer, said the data in the public domain suggests the vaccine could even have a “protective effect” against blood clots.

He said that information provided on the normal the incident rate stood at about 120 per 100,000 population ­— which is broken down to a rate of 130 for men and 110 for women.

Dr Campbell added: “The data is that from a much larger population size.

“While it is right to look at the data, it does not seem to be surprising.”

After the talk he said the data “does look a bit strange”.

In a statement yesterday, Mr Cox said: “The decision of a number of countries to suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine is baffling.

“There have been 37 reports of blood clots following over 17m doses of the vaccine being given ­— that’s actually a lower incidence of blood clotting than you’d expect to see just by chance, so there’s absolutely no evidence that the vaccine can cause blood clots.”