Norway, Sweden and Denmark will continue to pause AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccinations, despite the European Medicines Agency (EMA) finding that the vaccine is “safe and effective”.
All three countries said they were reviewing the EMA’s verdict that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks.
“Due to the many serious cases in Norway, we want to completely review the situation before reaching a conclusion,” said Geir Bukholm, Director of the Infection Control Division at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
“This is going to take some time and we will provide an update at the end of next week,” he added.
Sweden’s public health agency said its national regulator is investigating cases of blood clots in the country.
“[We] I hope that next week we can decide how best to use this vaccine in the future, “said Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.
In Denmark, the health authority said there were “cases of severe but rare blood clots seen after vaccination with AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.”
They will give a press conference on Friday to answer questions about the vaccine, but will continue to pause vaccinations while reviewing the EMA assessment in the coming days.
On Thursday morning, a Norwegian medical team said there was a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots.
“We got results that can explain the clinical course of our hospitalized patients,” said Pål André Holme, professor of hematology at Oslo University Hospital, just hours before the EMA briefing.
“These patients had a powerful immune response that led to the formation of antibodies that can affect platelets and thus lead to a blood clot,” he said, saying he sees no other possibility, but that it is linked to the vaccine.
Norway, where around 120,000 people received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, had six cases of serious side effects, two of which were fatal.