Denmark, Norway, Iceland temporarily halt use of AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine; UK calls it safe & effective

 The United Kingdom defended the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after Denmark temporarily suspended its use. 

Denmark, Norway and Iceland temporarily suspended the use of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine on March 11, 2021 due to concerns about patients developing blood clots post the vaccine jab, despite AstraZeneca and Europe's medicines watchdog insisting that the vaccine was safe.

The move comes after reports of blood clots among people who were administered the first dose of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine. The Danish health authority, however, stressed that the move was precautionary and that "it has not been determined, at the time being, that there is a link between the vaccine and the blood clots".

The Danish health authority director Soren Brostrom said in the statement, "It is important to point out that we have not terminated the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, we are just pausing its use."

Brostrom added saying that there is broad documentation proving that the vaccine is both safe and efficient. "But both we and the Danish Medicines Agency must act on information about possible serious side effects, both in Denmark and in other European countries," Brostrom said.

Here is how this started

Austria suspended the use of a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines on March 8, 2021 after a 49-year-old nurse died of "severe blood coagulation problems" days after receiving the vaccine.

Following this, four other European countries, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Latvia and Estonia also suspended the use of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines from the batch. The batch, comprising one million jabs, was sent to 17 European countries.

Denmark, however, suspended the use of all of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine supply. Iceland and Norway followed suit citing similar concerns. The Director of infection prevention and control at the National Institute of Health of Norway, Geir Bukholm, also said that they are pausing the AstraZeneca vaccination in Norway till they get more information to see if there is a link between the vaccine and the blood clot case.

Impact

The suspension will be reviewed after two weeks. It will definitely slow down Denmark's vaccination campaign. Denmark now expects to have its entire adult population vaccinated by mid-August instead of early July.

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UK defends AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, calls it 'safe and effective'

•The United Kingdom on March 11, 2021 defended the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after Denmark temporarily suspended its use. The United Kingdom insisted that the vaccine is both safe and effective and said that it will continue with its own rollout of the vaccine.

•UK PM Boris Johnson's official spokesman said that the results of the vaccine programme are visible in terms of lower number of COVID-19 cases, lower number of deaths and hospitalisations.

•Europe's medicines watchdog, European Medicines Agency (EMA) also insisted that AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine is safe. In fact, it said that a preliminary probe showed that the batch of AstraZeneca vaccines used in Austria was likely not to blame for the nurse's death.

•The EMA also shared that only 22 cases of blood clots were reported among more than three million people vaccinated in the European Economic Area as of March 9, 2021.

Background

The United Kingdom had begun the world's first mass vaccination drive against the coronavirus in December 2020 by granting emergency use authorisation to the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Denmark had last year killed its entire population of Mink based on rumours of coronavirus getting transmitted to humans through minks. The rumours, however, had turned out to be false.