Reuters/Dado Ruvic
- Ireland on Sunday temporarily halted the use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
- The rollout was paused after Norway reported cases of serious blood clotting post-inoculation.
- Ireland is the latest EU country to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after Austria, Italy, and Denmark.
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Ireland on Sunday became the latest country to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after more reports came out of Norway of serious blood clotting in some recipients.
According to the Irish Times, Irish National Immunization Advisory Committee (NIAC) deputy chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said that while the rollout has been temporarily deferred, it "has not been concluded that there is any link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and these cases."
However, the NIAC said that it would wait for "more reassuring data," and put a pause on administering the vaccines as a precaution. The NIAC will meet again this week to discuss the suspension of the vaccine.
The BBC reported that over 110,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have already been administered in Ireland. This brings the vaccine's tally to 20% of all Covid-19 vaccines given to date in the country.
There have been over 226,000 COVID cases in Ireland and 4,534 deaths.
Denmark, Iceland, and Norway, Bulgaria, and Thailand have suspended the use of the vaccine jointly developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
Insider also reported that five EU countries - Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and Latvia - had stopped using a specific batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine after the death of a vaccinated person. The batch had consisted of 1 million doses that were sent to 17 EU countries.
In a statement to CNN, AstraZeneca has defended the vaccine, saying that there were no quality issues with the vaccine, and "no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or thrombocytopenia" for those who had received it.
An AP report said that the World Health Organization and the European Union's medicines regulator had echoed AstraZeneca's statement, saying that there was no link between getting the Covid-19 vaccine and the increased risk of blood clotting after.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been granted emergency use in more than 50 countries,
AstraZeneca's vaccine has been granted conditional marketing authorization or emergency use in more than 50 countries but has not yet been issued emergency-use authorization in the US.
