Despite the European Medicines Agency EMA’s conclusion that AstraZeneca vaccine was “safe and effective”, authorities in Finland have joined other Scandinavian countries to suspend the vaccination, Euronews reports.
The country’s public health authority said two people developed blood clots after being vaccinated. As a result, jabs will be suspended “until there is more information and a possible causality can be assessed”.
Dozens of European countries had suspended the vaccine amid reports of blood clots.
Some, such as Italy, Germany and Spain indicated they would restart AstraZeneca vaccinations after the EMA’s safety review on Thursday.
But Norway, Sweden and Denmark said they would not be lifting their suspensions.
All three countries said they were reviewing the EMA verdict that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks following 25 reports of rare but serious blood clots in Europe.
France’s health authority said on Friday that vaccinations could restart, but only in people over the age of 55, citing serious cases of rare blood clots in young people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine as the reason why.
Norway, Sweden and Denmark continue pause on vaccination
Geir Bukholm, the director of the Division of Infection Control at the Norwegian Institute for Public Health, said the vaccination pause would continue in Norway.
“Due to the several serious cases in Norway, we want to thoroughly review the situation before we make a conclusion,” he said. “This will take some time, and we will provide an update at the end of next week.”
Sweden’s public health agency said their national regulator was investigating cases of blood clots in the country.
“[We] hope that next week we will be able to decide how best to use this vaccine in the future,” said Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.
In Denmark, the health authority said that there were “observed cases of severe but rare blood clots after vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca” and they would continue to pause vaccinations as they review EMA’s assessment.
Professor Neil Mabbott, chair of immunopathology at the University of Edinburgh, said decisions to stop the AstraZeneca vaccine were “overcautious” as it is proven to stop death and hospitalisation and was given the green light by the EU and UK regulators.
“When you are giving out millions of vaccines in a short period of time, which has been the case…it’s not surprising that you might expect to see rare or apparent associations at least of these kind of events,” he explained, stating that the blood clotting events remained “extremely rare”.
“The COVID-19 infection itself can in some individuals cause clotting so having the vaccine itself actually protects you from having these events,” Mabbott added.
By Euronews
