DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland on Sunday suspended AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine “as a precaution” on Sunday, citing reports from the Norwegian Medicines Agency about a cluster of severe blood clotting in some receptors.
Three Norwegian health workers who had recently received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were treated at the hospital for bleeding, blood clots and a low number of blood platelets, health officials said on Saturday.
The National Immunization Advisory Committee (NIAC) in Ireland recommended the temporary postponement pending further information from European regulators in the coming days.
Authorities in Denmark, Norway and Iceland have suspended the use of the vaccine due to clotting problems, while Austria stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots last week while investigating death from clotting disorders.
EMA has said there is no evidence that the events were caused by vaccination, an opinion echoed by the World Health Organization on Friday. AstraZeneca also said it had found no evidence of an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis.
Irish authorities received some clotting reports similar to those seen in Europe last week, but nothing as serious as the cases in Norway, Deputy Director-General Ronan Glynn said.
Glynn said the fact that Norwegian cases related to a cluster of four unusual coagulation events involving the brain in children aged 30 to 40 increased the level of concern.
He said one of the reasons Ireland acted now was that the AstraZeneca vaccine should be given to people of a similar age with severe underlying conditions next week.
“Maybe it’s nothing, maybe we’ll be overreacting and I sincerely hope that within a week we’ll have been accused of being too cautious,” Glynn told national broadcaster RTE.
“We hope to have data that will reassure us in a few days and we will work with that again.”
AstraZeneca vaccines account for 20% of the 590,000 shots administered among the 4.9 million people in Ireland, mainly to health workers after their use was initially not recommended for people over 70 and the firm supplied the European Union much fewer vaccines than agreed.
There have been 4,534 COVID-19-related deaths in Ireland. The number of cases per 100,000 people in the last 14 days fell to 155, from a high of more than 1,500 in January, although officials are concerned about a slight increase in new cases in recent days.
Northern Ireland Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill also expressed concern about AstraZeneca’s suspension elsewhere. The region’s deputy director of public health, Stephen Bergin, said the vaccine will continue to be implemented.
Like the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland is much later in its program and has inoculated more than 40% of the adult population, relying heavily on the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Report by Padraic Halpin, edited by Bernadette Baum and Louise Heavens