COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark said on Saturday that one person died and another became seriously ill with blood clots and cerebral hemorrhage after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination.
The two, both members of the hospital staff, received the AstraZeneca vaccine less than 14 days before becoming ill, said the official who runs public hospitals in Copenhagen.
The Danish Medicines Agency confirmed that it had received two “serious reports”, without giving further details. There were no details of when the hospital staff fell ill.
Denmark, which suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 11, was among more than a dozen countries that temporarily stopped using the vaccine after a small number of rare blood clot case reports sent scientists and governments fighting to determine any connection.
Some countries, including Germany and France, this week reversed their decision to stop using the vaccine after an investigation into blood clot reports by the European Union’s drug watchdog, which said on Thursday that it is still convinced that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.
Denmark – along with Sweden and Norway – said on Friday that it needs more time to decide whether to use the vaccine.
“We prioritized reports of suspected serious side effects like these and scrutinized them to see if there was a possible link to the vaccine,” said Tanja Erichsen, acting director of Pharmacovigilance at the Danish Medicines Agency, in a tweet on Saturday.
“We are in the process of dealing with the two specific cases.”
The director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Emer Cooke, said on Thursday that the agency could not definitively rule out a link between blood clot incidents and the vaccine in its investigation.
But she said the review’s “clear” conclusion was that the benefits of protecting people from the risk of death or hospitalization outweigh the possible risks. The issue deserves further analysis, said the EMA.
The EMA review covering 20 million people in the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA), which links 30 European countries, included seven cases of blood clots in various blood vessels and 18 cases of a rare, difficult-to-treat condition called cerebral venous. sinus thrombosis (CVST).
AstraZeneca, which developed the injection with the University of Oxford, said that a review covering more than 17 million people who received their injections in the EU and Britain found no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
The company on Saturday declined to comment on the new cases in Denmark, but referred to a statement published on Thursday, in which its medical director, Ann Taylor, said:
“Vaccine safety is paramount and we welcome the decisions of regulators who affirm the overwhelming benefit of our vaccine in stopping the pandemic. We trust that, after careful decisions by regulators, vaccinations can once again be resumed across Europe. “
Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen,; Editing by Alexander Smith and Frances Kerry