The Irish vaccine task force recommends a temporary suspension after reports of blood clots among those who received the COVID vaccine.
Ireland’s vaccination task force recommended temporarily suspending the launch of the AstraZeneca coronavirus injection after reports of blood clots in adults who received the injection.
“The National Immunization Advisory Committee (NIAC) recommended that the administration of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine be temporarily postponed from this morning,” said Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Ireland, Ronan Glynn, in a statement on Sunday.
He said the recommendation was made “based on the precautionary principle” after “a report by the Norwegian Medicines Agency on four new reports of serious blood clotting events in adults after vaccination”.
The NIAC is due to meet on Sunday morning and issue a new statement on the matter.
Jonah Hull of Al Jazeera, reporting from London, said the Irish task force’s action was of concern to the drugmaker.
“The company was very quick to adhere to this and vigorously defended its vaccine, pointing out that the safety data compiled in the past two months has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism or thrombosis,” said Hull.
The recommendation comes at a time when Irish authorities are pressuring the pharmaceutical company to accelerate supplies to the country.
About 570,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered in Ireland to date, according to government data last updated on Wednesday.
A total of 109,000 of these doses were made by the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which developed its vaccine with the University of Oxford.
Meanwhile, Norway announced on Thursday that it was also suspending the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“This is a cautious decision,” said Geir Bukholm, director of infection prevention and control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), at a news conference.
FHI did not say how long the suspension would last.
“We … await information to see if there is a link between vaccination and this case with a blood clot,” said Bukholm.
Also on Thursday, Italy announced that it would suspend the use of an AstraZeneca lot other than that used in Austria.
Austria stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and a disease from pulmonary embolism.
Denmark will not use AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine for two weeks after reports that some recipients have developed severe blood clots and in one case may have died as a result, the country’s authorities said on Thursday. They did not say how many reports of blood clots have occurred.
AstraZeneca, for its part, told the Reuters news agency in a written statement that the safety of its vaccine has been extensively studied in tests on humans, and peer-reviewed data confirmed that the vaccine was generally well tolerated.