Denmark and at least five other countries are putting AstraZeneca’s vaccine on hold after several vaccinated people allegedly got blood clots. One person died.
Whether the blood clots and the death are due to the corona vaccine is not clear at the moment, news bureau NTB writes.
The Danish Medicines Agency has confirmed in a press release that five countries have followed the same line as Denmark. The other countries are Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Luxembourg, Euronews wrote on Wednesday night.
“It is too early to conclude whether there is a connection between the death and the vaccine. This will be thoroughly investigated,” Minister of Health Magnus Heunicke wrote on Twitter.
AstraZeneca: Patient safety is our highest priority
AstraZeneca, which has developed the vaccine in collaboration with Oxford University, states that the pharmaceutical company is aware that a possible connection between the company’s vaccines and blood clots is being investigated.
But it did not want to comment on individual cases. Instead, the company emphasized that patient safety is its highest priority.
“The safety of the vaccine has been thoroughly investigated in phase 3 studies, and peer-reviewed data confirm that the vaccine is generally well-tolerated,” the Swedish-British company wrote in a comment to the news agency Ritzau on Thursday.
Working on an overview
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says that the vaccine use has been put on hold until the authorities get an overview of the side effects.
She says it is too early to make any conclusions about the significance of the bad news.
“Of course, it hurts to get such news, but first and foremost, it is right to investigate the matter,” Frederiksen added.
The Norwegian Directorate of Health’s chief Søren Brostrøm states that it was not an easy decision to make in the middle of large-scale mass vaccination.
“But precisely because we vaccinate so many, we must react in a timely manner when there are possible serious side effects,” he wrote in a comment.
