OSLO (Reuters) – Three Norwegian health workers who recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 are being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and low blood platelets, Norwegian health officials said on Saturday.
Norway stopped launching the vaccine on Thursday, following a similar move by Denmark. Iceland followed suit.
“We do not know if the cases are related to the vaccine,” Sigurd Hortemo, a senior doctor at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told a news conference jointly with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
All three people were under 50 years old.
The European drug regulator EMA would investigate the three incidents, Hortemo added.
“They have very unusual symptoms: bleeding, blood clots and low blood platelets,” said Steinar Madsen, medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency for NRK.
“They are quite ill … We take this very seriously,” he said, adding that authorities received notification of the cases on Saturday.
AstraZeneca was not immediately available for comment.
Prior to moving to Denmark and Norway, Austria stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca photos while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and an illness caused by a pulmonary embolism.
However, the EMA said on Thursday that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks and could continue to be administered.
Europe is struggling to speed up the launch of the vaccine after delivery delays at Pfizer and AstraZeneca, even as an increase in cases amid a more contagious virus variant has triggered new blockages in countries such as Italy and France.