Denmark ends use of AstraZeneca vaccine citing clotting fears
Denmark is completely halting the use of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, Danish Health Administration head Soren Brostrom has said.
The vaccination campaign will continue without the shot from the British-Swedish company, Brostrom said at a press conference in Copenhagen on Wednesday.
Denmark had temporarily suspended vaccinations with the AstraZeneca shot on March 11 as a precautionary measure and has not resumed them since then, even to a limited extent as other countries have done.
The reason for the halt were isolated severe cases of blood clots - and even suspected deaths - in people who had previously been vaccinated against Covid-19 with the AstraZeneca shot.
The fears those side effects raised - along with the facts that Denmark's government says it has the coronavirus under control to a degree and that the country has other vaccine choices - prompted the decision.
Dropping AstraZeneca will mean that Denmark's vaccination programme will now take a few weeks more than initially planned.
The fears raised by the relatively few number of blood clot deaths after an AstreZeneca jab have reverberated through the countries that had been relying upon the vaccine to help them get the spread of the coronavirus under control.
EMA says vaccine is safe
Health agencies like the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization have stood by the AstraZeneca jab, arguing it remains safe. That has led several other countries to reestablish its use, albeit for limited age ranges. Germany, for example, is only allowing the jab for those aged 60 or older.
About 150,000 people in Denmark have received the AstraZeneca jab. Of those, around 600 have received the recommended two doses for full effect.
Those still in need of a second jab will be given a different vaccine, authorities said. They did not rule out that AstraZeneca jabs might be returned to use should the situation change.
Overall, about 1 million of Denmark's 5.8 million residents have received at least one dose of vaccine. About half of those have received two doses. The majority of vaccinations have been with the jab from BioNTech/Pfizer.