By Nneka Nwogwugwu
AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine has been temporarily suspended in Denmark, Norway and Iceland
The vaccine was suspended on Thursday over concerns about patients developing post-jab blood clots, as the manufacturer and Europe’s medicines watchdog insisted the vaccine was safe.
Denmark was first to announce its suspension, “following reports of serious cases of blood clots” among people who had received the vaccine, the country’s Health Authority said in a statement.
It stressed the move was precautionary, and that “it has not been determined, at the time being, that there is a link between the vaccine and the blood clots”.
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As of March 9, 22 cases of blood clots had been reported among more than three million people vaccinated in the European Economic Area, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said.
Austria announced on Monday that it had suspended the use of a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines after a 49-year-old nurse died of “severe blood coagulation problems” days after receiving an anti-Covid shot.
Four other European countries — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Luxemburg — have also suspended the use of vaccines from this batch, which was sent to 17 European countries and consisted of one million jabs.
Denmark however suspended the use of all of its AstraZeneca supply, as did Iceland and Norway in subsequent announcements on Thursday citing similar concerns.
On Wednesday, the EMA said a preliminary probe showed that the batch of AstraZeneca vaccines used in Austria was likely not to blame for the nurse’s death.
AstraZeneca, an Anglo-Swedish company which developed the vaccine with Oxford University, defended the safety of its product.
“The safety of the vaccine has been extensively studied in phase III clinical trials and peer-reviewed data confirms the vaccine has been generally well tolerated,” a spokesman for the group told AFP.
