FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Norway has changed its policy on the use of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to consider excluding terminally ill people, following reports of deaths in very fragile recipients after inoculation. said BioNTech on Monday.
“The Norwegian health authorities have changed (their) recommendation in relation to vaccination of terminally ill patients (clinical fragility scale 8 or higher),” BioNTech said.
The Clinical Fragility Scale, a classification system widely used in care for the elderly, defines grade 8 patients as those who are nearing the end of their lives and who cannot normally “recover until all of a minor illness ”.
The Norwegian Medicines Agency said in a statement released on Friday and updated on Monday that “common adverse reactions may have contributed to a severe course in elderly people who are frail.”
As of January 14, 23 reports of alleged deaths have been sent to the Norwegian health registry, he said.
“An assessment must be made for each patient as to whether the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of possible side effects,” the Norwegian agency said.
In Norway, an average of 400 people die each week in residences and long-term care centers, the drug agency said.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a briefing on Monday that the country’s vaccine regulator did not see a need to revise the guidelines and was in contact with its Norwegian counterparts.
Vaccine safety is drawing the attention of the global public after drug manufacturers developed the dizzying speed of shootings to curb a pandemic that killed more than 2 million people.
American and European vaccine developers have pledged to maintain the scientific standards against which vaccines will be maintained in the race to contain the virus.
Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said there is no evidence so far on a causal link between the death of vulnerable patients in Norway and vaccination.
“We don’t know yet, but it seems that the numbers of deaths observed are not noticeably higher than expected, but it will need to be continuously examined in all countries where it can be done,” he said.
Report by Ludwig Burger; Additional reports by Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Edited by Alex Richardson