DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland has become the latest country to stop using the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, temporarily suspending the shot “out of plenty of caution”, following reports in Norway of severe blood clotting in some recipients there.
Three Norwegian health workers who had recently received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and a low blood platelet count, health officials said on Saturday.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NIAC) in Ireland has recommended a temporary postponement until more information is received from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in the coming days.
AstraZeneca said on Sunday that it had carried out an analysis covering more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union and the United Kingdom, which showed no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
Denmark, Norway and Iceland suspended the use of the vaccine due to clotting problems, while Thailand became the first non-European country to do so on Friday, postponing the launch of AstraZeneca on safety issues in Europe.
Italy’s northern region, Piedmont, said on Sunday it would stop using a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines after a teacher died on Saturday after being vaccinated. Austria also stopped using a certain lot last week.
The EMA said on Friday that there was no indication that the events were caused by vaccination, an opinion that was repeated by the World Health Organization.
“SO WE CAN RETURN”
Irish authorities received several reports of coagulation similar to those seen in Europe last week, but nothing as serious as the cases in Norway, said Dr Ronan Glynn’s deputy director.
Glynn said Norwegian cases involving a group of four unusual coagulation events involving the brain in children between the ages of 30 and 40 raised the level of concern higher.
He said one of the reasons Ireland acted now was to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to people of a similar age with serious illnesses underlying it next week.
“Maybe it’s nothing, we might overreact and I sincerely hope that in a week we will be accused of being too cautious,” Glynn told RTE national broadcaster.
“We hope to have data to reassure us in a few short days and we will get back to work.”
Vaccines against AstraZeneca account for 20% of the 590,000 vaccines given to Ireland’s 4.9 million people, mainly health workers, after their use was not initially recommended for people over the age of 70, and the company provided the EU with fewer vaccines than agreed.
There have been 4,534 COVID-19-related deaths in Ireland. The number of cases per 100,000 people in the last 14 days has dropped to 151 from a high of more than 1,500 in January, although officials are concerned about a slight increase in new cases in recent days.
Northern Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill has expressed concern about the suspension of AstraZeneca elsewhere. In response to Ireland’s decision, the UK drug regulator said that while closely examining the reports, the available evidence did not suggest that the vaccine was the cause of the clots.
Like the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland is much more advanced in its program and has inoculated more than 40% of the adult population, relying heavily on the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Reported by Padraic Halpin, edited by Bernadette Baum, Louise Heavens and Jane Merriman