Several European countries suspended use of either batches of a COVID-19 vaccine or the entire vaccine.
Austria, Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania, and Luxembourg have all suspended the use of a suspect batch of the Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine. The batch, which consists of 1 million doses and is called ABV5300, was originally sent to 17 European countries. It has been implicated in the death of a 49-year-old nurse in Zwettl, Austria. A 35-year-old woman in the same town survived a pulmonary embolism she suffered shortly after taking a dose from the same batch.
Italy has suspended the use of a different batch of the Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine, ABV 2856, after 43-year-old naval officer Stefano Paternò had a fatal heart attack 24 hours after receiving a dose of it this week in Sicily. According to the Corriere della Sera, Paternò was in good health before his inoculation, and then afterward suffered a fever, followed by convulsions. There are also reports that a second Italian, a 50-year-old policeman named Davide Villa, also died after receiving the vaccine in Sicily. Villa developed deep vein thrombosis after his inoculation and succumbed 12 days later.
Denmark, Iceland, and Norway have suspended using any batch of the Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine after the death of a Danish woman with blood clots. The 60-year-old woman died shortly after receiving the vaccine.
On Thursday, Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke tweeted that the country would be suspending the use of the Anglo-Swedish vaccine, which has already come under intense scrutiny across Europe and further afield.
“The health authorities have, due to precautionary measures, suspended vaccination with AstraZeneca following a signal of a possible serious side effect in the form of fatal blood clots. It is currently not possible to conclude whether there is a connection. We act early, it needs to be thoroughly investigated #COVID19dk,” Heunicke wrote on Twitter.
This news comes after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Wednesday published its view on a number of side effects supposedly linked to the administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Austria.
Austrian authorities suspended the use of a batch of AstraZeneca Covid-19 jabs after a person was diagnosed with multiple thrombosis (formation of blood clots within blood vessels) and died 10 days after vaccination. Another was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism and there were two further reports of thromboembolic event incidents linked to the batch.
The EMA said there is “no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions.”
Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia also suspended the use of the batch following the news from Austria.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been widely administered around the world, including the UK where more than 24 million jabs have been given, the majority of which were developed by the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical firm.
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