A German health professional administers the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 3, just days before the country stopped using the vaccine.
Photo:
Action Press / Zuma Press
BERLIN – Germany says it temporarily halts administration of Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by AstraZeneca AZN -0.45%
PLC, the latest in a series of mostly European countries to have stopped vaccinations with the shot amid a small number of blood clotting cases reported on the continent.
The German government said it stopped firing on AstraZeneca on the advice of its drug agency. The country’s health minister confirmed that there were seven cases in Germany of 1.6 million doses that had been administered.
Denmark last week said it had stopped firing AstraZeneca for two weeks after reports of blood clotting, and several other European countries followed suit, saying they were doing so with great caution. Norway, Ireland and the Netherlands are some of the countries that have stopped vaccination with AstraZeneca.
More information about the AstraZeneca vaccine
Health regulators in the UK and Europe, along with AstraZeneca and its Oxford University vaccine development partners, say no connection is known between severe coagulation and shooting. AstraZeneca has said that the number of cases of blood clotting among the approximately 17 million people in the European Union and the United Kingdom who have been shot is lower than in the general population.
The European drug regulator said last week it was studying about 30 reported cases of severe clotting, of about five million people who have been shot in the block. Last week, the regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said “the benefits of the vaccine still outweigh the risks” and continued to recommend its use. The agency said most side effects are mild or moderate. Clinical trials did not generate flags about blood clotting as a risk.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected] and Jenny Strasburg at [email protected]
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