At least three European Union countries are withholding AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, while the block’s drug regulator said it is safe to use.
Denmark, Norway and Sweden said they would wait until next week to decide whether to resume their rollout of the shot, after many people who made clots developed it.
They were among more than a dozen European Union countries that suspended AstraZeneca vaccination while the European Medicine Agency investigated blood clotting cases, some of which were fatal.
The agency concluded on Thursday that the British drugmaker vaccine did not increase the overall risk of blood clots, leading many countries – including Italy, France and Germany – to announce that they would discontinue it.
But the three Scandinavian countries were more cautious, saying they wanted to end their national review.
Health officials in Denmark said they would not decide whether to continue the AstraZeneca rollout until after the two-week pause. The country announced a suspension last week after a 60-year-old vaccinated woman developed “highly unusual symptoms” before dying of a blood clot.
“It is important that we, along with the EMA and other drug regulatory authorities, take their time to fully evaluate these types of reports,” Tanja Erichsen, Acting Director of Pharmacovigilance of the Danish Medicine Agency, Said in a statement on Thursday.
Both Norway And Sweden They said they would take the EMA’s findings into consideration as they would resume the vaccination of AstraZeneca.
Authorities noted the severity of some cases of blood clots. EMA, however, said they were rare – just 25 blood clot cases were reported on Tuesday out of the nearly 20 million Europeans who received the shot.
“Due to the state of many serious cases in Norway, we intend to review the situation as a whole before concluding,” said Geir Böckholm, director of the Division of Infection Control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
The three countries differed from their Nordic neighbor, Finland, which never stopped using AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Like the World Health Organization and AstraZeneca, the health officials there Noted There was no evidence that the shot increased the risk of blood clots.
AstraZeneca’s US-listed shares rose nearly 0.9 percent in Friday trading at $ 79.9 at a: 60
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