DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland became the latest country to ban the use of the Covid-19 vaccine on AstraZeneca on Sunday, following reports from Nineway that there were serious blood clots in some recipients.
Three Norwegian health workers who recently received the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine were being treated at the hospital for bleeding, blood clots and low blood platelet count, health officials said Saturday.
Ireland’s National Immune Advisory Committee (NIAC) has recommended a temporary suspension in the coming days to receive more information from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Denmark approves use of blood clots STR Strajeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine following reports
AstraZeneca said on Sunday that it had conducted a review covering more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union and the UK without any evidence of a risk of blood clots.
Denmark, Norway and Iceland have suspended vaccine use on clotting issues, while Thailand on Friday became the first country to do so outside Europe, delaying its AstraZeneca rollout over safety concerns in Europe.
The northern Italian region of Piedmont said on Sunday it would stop using a group of AstraZeneca vaccines if a teacher died after vaccinations on Saturday. Austria also stopped using the special batch last week.
The EMA said on Friday that there was no indication that these events were caused by vaccinations, a view echoed by the World Health Organization.
‘We can observe’
Ronan Glynn, deputy chief medical officer, said Irish officials had received some reports of a coalition similar to the one seen in Europe last week, but nothing as serious as the Norwegian case.
Glenn said the Norwegian cases related to a cluster of four abnormal brain clotting cases in children between the ages of 30 and 40 raised a high level of concern.
He said one of the reasons Ireland did so now was that it had to vaccinate people of the same age with serious underlying conditions next week.
“It may not be anything, we may be overreacting and I sincerely hope that within a week or so we will be accused of being overly cautious,” Glan told national broadcaster RTE.
“Hopefully in a few days we will have the data to reassure us and we will come back and walk with this.”
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Ireland Strazeneca vaccination makes up 20% of the 90 90,000 shots given to Ireland’s 9.9 million population, primarily for healthcare workers.
There have been 4,534 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland. The number of cases per 100,000 people has dropped from a low of 1,500 in January to 151 in the last 14 days, although officials are concerned about a slight increase in new cases in recent days.
Michelle O’Neill, Deputy Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, also expressed concern about the suspension of AstraZeneca. In response to Ireland’s decision, the UK drug regulator said that while it was closely reviewing the reports, the available evidence did not indicate that the vaccine was the cause of the clotting.
Like the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland is at the forefront of its program and has inoculated more than 40% of the adult population, relying heavily on the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Report by Pedrek Halpin, edited by Bernadette Balm, Louis Hevens and Jane Merriman
