A health professional in Germany administers the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 3, just days before the country stops using the vaccine.
Photograph:
Action Press / Zuma Press
BERLIN – Germany says it is temporarily discontinuing the administration of Covid-19 vaccines made by AstraZeneca AZN -0.35%
PLC, the most recent in a series of mainly European countries that have stopped vaccination with the injection amid a small number of reported blood clotting cases on the continent.
The German government said it suspended AstraZeneca’s injections on the advice of its drug agency. The country’s Minister of Health confirmed that there were seven cases in Germany of 1.6 million doses administered.
Denmark said last week that it paused AstraZeneca injections for two weeks after reports of blood clotting, and several other European countries quickly followed suit, saying they were doing so out of caution. Norway, Ireland and the Netherlands are among the countries that stopped vaccination with the injection of AstraZeneca.
More about the AstraZeneca vaccine
Health regulators in the UK and Europe, along with AstraZeneca and its vaccine development partners at the University of Oxford, say there is no known connection between severe clotting and the injection. AstraZeneca said the number of blood clotting cases among the approximately 17 million people in the European Union and the UK who received the injection is less than in the general population.
Europe’s drug regulator said last week that it was investigating about 30 reported cases of severe clotting, among about five million people who received the injection in the block. Last week, the regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said that “the benefits of the vaccine today still outweigh the risks” and continued to recommend its use. The agency said most side effects were mild or moderate. Clinical trials have not raised flags about blood clotting as a risk.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected] and Jenny Strasburg at [email protected]
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