Until Friday, Norway had only used the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Photographer: Jean-Francois Monier / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Jean-Francois Monier / AFP / Getty Images
Norwegian health authorities say there is no evidence of a direct link between the recent chain of deaths among elderly people inoculated against Covid-19 and the vaccine they received.
Norwegian Medicines Agency tries to address fears that vaccination is too risky after 33 people in the country aged According to the latest agency figures, they died more than 75 years after the vaccination. They were all already seriously ill, he said.
“It is clear that Covid-19 is much more dangerous for most patients than vaccination,” Steinar Madsen, medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said by telephone on Monday. “We are not alarmed.”
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Norway’s initial reports reached international headlines as the world looks for the first signs of possible vaccine side effects. Until Friday, Norway had only used the vaccine provided by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, and companies are now working with the Nordic country to examine the deaths. The first European-level safety report on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is due in late January.
“All of these patients have had serious underlying illnesses,” Madsen said. “We cannot say that people will die from the vaccine. We can say that it can be casual. It is difficult to prove that the vaccine is the direct cause.
What Bloomberg intelligence says …
“The concept of limiting Covid-19 vaccines to those under 75 is not supported by U.S. data covering more than 14 million inoculated people, according to our analysis, although Norway reported a much higher mortality rate after using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Excessive deaths in Norway suggest they are found in subjects with serious and uncontrolled diseases. “
– Sam Fazeli, senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence
–Click here for the full report
Norway has given at least one dose to about 42,000 people, focusing on those who are considered most at risk if they contract the virus, including the elderly. Madsen says it is possible that the side effects of vaccination may, in some cases, “tilt patients into a more severe course of the underlying disease. We cannot rule it out. “According to him, Norway has already vaccinated all patients in nursing homes,” more or less “, and the reported fatalities are” much less than 1 in 1,000 “.
Madsen said he does not expect a different result with another vaccine, from Moderna Inc., which was introduced on Friday in Norway. Like the Pfizer-BioNTech feature, it uses messenger RNA technology that teaches the body’s cells how to fight infection.
The Norwegian Medicines Agency says it made it clear before the vaccination program began that “deaths are expected to occur in a time-related context with vaccination” for “older and sick” people who they receive inoculation.
– With the help of Stephen Treloar and Naomi Kresge