At least four European countries are keeping AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine on hold for now, even after the European Union drug regulator said it was safe to use.
Denmark, Norway and Sweden said they would wait until next week to decide whether to resume applying the vaccine after several people who received it developed blood clots.
And Finland suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday, after reporting two cases of blood clot in people who were injected four to ten days earlier. Both have medical risk factors associated with blood clots, officials said.
More than a dozen European nations have suspended AstraZeneca vaccines while the European Medicines Agency investigated cases of blood clots, some of which are fatal.
The agency concluded on Thursday that the British pharmaceutical vaccine does not increase the overall risk of blood clots, prompting several countries – including Italy, France and Germany – to announce that they would remove it from the shelf.
But the four Nordic countries were more cautious, saying they wanted to finish their own analysis.
Danish health officials said they would not decide whether to continue with the launch of AstraZeneca before the end of the two-week break. The country announced the suspension last week after a vaccinated 60-year-old woman developed “highly unusual symptoms” before she died of a blood clot.
“It is important that we, together with the EMA and other drug regulatory authorities, thoroughly evaluate this type of report,” said Tanja Erichsen, director of pharmacovigilance at the Danish Medicines Agency, in a statement on Thursday.
Both Norway – which is not part of the EU – and Sweden said they would take the EMA’s conclusions into account while considering whether to restart AstraZeneca vaccines.
Officials noted the severity of some of the blood clot cases. The EMA, however, said they are rare – only 25 cases of a blood clot were reported as of Tuesday among about 20 million Europeans who received the injection.
“Due to the situation of several serious cases in Norway, we want to do a thorough review of the situation before making a conclusion,” said Geir Bukholm, director of the Infection Control Division at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Finland reversed the course a week after saying it would continue to use the AstraZeneca vaccine amid fears of blood clots. Like the World Health Organization and AstraZeneca itself, the authorities noted on March 12 that there was no evidence that the injection increased the risk of blood clots.
US listed AstraZeneca shares fell about 0.1 percent to $ 49.29 at 2:09 pm on Friday.