COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark said on Saturday that one person had died and another was seriously ill with blood clots and cerebral haemorrhage after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
The two, both hospital staff, both received the AstraZeneca vaccine less than 14 days before they became ill, the authority that runs Copenhagen’s public hospitals said.
The Danish Medicines Agency confirmed that it had received two “serious reports” without providing further details. There were no details about when the hospital staff fell ill.
Denmark, which stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 11, is among more than a dozen countries that have temporarily stopped using the vaccine after a small number of reports of rare blood clots were sent by scientists and governments. who were in a hurry to determine any connection.
Some countries, including Germany and France, this week overturned their decision to suspend the use of the vaccine following an investigation into reports of blood clots by the European Union’s drug surveillance body, which said on Thursday it was still convinced that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.
Denmark – along with Sweden and Norway – said on Friday they needed more time to decide whether to use the vaccine.
“We prioritize reports of suspected serious adverse reactions such as these and examine them in detail to assess whether there is a possible link to the vaccine,” Tanja Erichsen, interim director of pharmacovigilance at the Danish Medicines Agency, said on Saturday.
“We are managing the two specific cases.”
The director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Emer Cooke, said on Thursday that the watchdog cannot definitively rule out a link between blood clot and vaccine incidents in his investigation.
However, she said the “clear” conclusion of the review was that the benefits in protecting people from the risk of death or hospitalization outweigh the possible risks. The issue deserves further analysis, the EMA said.
The EMA review, which covers 20 million people in the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA), which links 30 European countries, included seven cases of blood clots in several blood vessels and 18 cases of rare diseases, which is difficult to treat, called venous cerebral sinus thrombosis (CVST).
AstraZeneca, which developed the shot with Oxford University, said a review covering more than 17 million people shot in the EU and the UK found no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
The company declined to comment on new cases in Denmark on Saturday, but referred to a statement released on Thursday in which its chief medical officer, Ann Taylor, said:
“Vaccine safety is paramount and we welcome the decisions of regulators that affirm the overwhelming benefit of our vaccine in stopping the pandemic. We are confident that, following the careful decisions of the regulators, vaccinations can be resumed throughout Europe. ”
Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Edited by Alexander Smith and Frances Kerry