Norway, Sweden and Denmark will continue a pause on AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccinations despite the European Medicines Agency (EMA) conclusion that the vaccine is “safe and effective”.
All three countries said they were reviewing the EMA verdict that the vaccine”s benefits outweigh its risks.
“Due to the several serious cases in Norway, we want to thoroughly review the situation before we make a conclusion” said Geir Bukholm, Director of the Division of Infection Control at the Norwegian Institute for Public Health.
“This will take some time, and we will provide an update at the end of next week,” he added.
Sweden’s public health agency said their national regulator was investigating cases of blood clots in the country.
“[We] hope that next week we will be able to decide how best to use this vaccine in the future,” said Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.
In Denmark, the health authority said that there were “observed cases of severe but rare blood clots after vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca.”
They will hold a press conference on Friday to answer questions about the vaccine but will continue to pause vaccinations as they review EMA’s assessment in the coming days.
Earlier on Thursday, a Norwegian medical team said there was a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots.
“We have obtained results which may explain the clinical course of our hospitalised patients,” said Pål André Holme, a professor of haematology at Oslo University Hospital, a few hours before the EMA briefing.
“These patients had a powerful immune response which led to the formation of antibodies which can affect the platelets and thus lead to a blood clot,” he said, stating that he did not see any other possibility but that it was linked to the vaccine.
Norway, where some 120,000 people received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, has had six cases of serious side effects, two of which were fatal.
