Norway, Sweden and Denmark will continue a break on AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccinations, despite the European Medicines Agency (EMA) ‘s conclusion that the vaccine is “safe and effective”.
All three countries said they were examining the EMA’s verdict that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks.
Their decisions fly ahead of those in several other European nations. Italy, France, Germany and Spain said on Thursday that they intend to resume vaccinations against AstraZeneca following the EMA statement.
“Due to several serious cases in Norway, we want to thoroughly analyze the situation before reaching a conclusion,” said Geir Bukholm, director of the Infection Control Division at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
“This will take some time and we will provide an update at the end of next week,” he added.
The Swedish public health agency said the national regulator is investigating cases of blood clots in the country.
“[We] I 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 there had been “observed cases of severe but rare blood clots after vaccination with AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.”
They will hold a press conference on Friday to answer questions about the vaccine, but will continue to discontinue vaccinations as they review the EMA 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 obtained results that could explain the clinical evolution of our hospitalized patients,” said Pål André Holme, a professor of hematology at Oslo University Hospital, a few hours before the EMA session.
“These patients had a strong immune response that led to the formation of antibodies that can affect platelets and thus lead to the formation of a blood clot,” he said, noting that he saw no other possibility, but that he has been linked to the vaccine.
Norway, where about 120,000 people received a first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine, had six cases of serious side effects, two of which were fatal.
Vaccines “help prevent death and hospitalization” – EMA
The European Regulatory Authority’s safety review looked at unconfirmed reports of an increased blood clot rate among AstraZeneca vaccine recipients to see if there was a link.
“Its benefits in protecting people from COVID-19 with the associated risks of death and hospitalization outweigh the possible risks,” EMA CEO Emer Cooke told a news conference.
She described, however, that the regulator “cannot definitively rule out a link between them [blood clot] cases and the vaccine “, saying that the safety assessment committee will continue its investigations.
“We need to constantly remember what a difficult situation we are in. This pandemic is costing us our lives. We have safe and effective vaccines that can help prevent death and hospitalization. We need to use these vaccines in the environments we have. They,” he said. Cooke.
The EMA’s opinion was warmly anticipated at a time when the European Union, in short supply of vaccines, is relying on millions of doses of this vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca.
The World Health Organization also said there was no evidence that the vaccine was to blame.
Cooke said earlier that this was not an “unexpected” situation when millions of people are vaccinated and thousands develop blood clots every year.
“Our role at EMA is to evaluate them, to make sure that the suspected side effects are investigated quickly so that we can figure out, is this a real side effect of the vaccine or is it a coincidence,” she said.