In Norway, three people attended to “unusual symptoms” after shooting with AstraZeneca COVID-19

OSLO (Reuters) – Three Norwegian health workers who had recently received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine are being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and a low number of blood platelets, Norwegian health authorities said on Saturday.

Norway stopped launching the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday, following a similar move from Denmark. Iceland later followed suit.

“We don’t know if the cases are vaccine-related,” said Sigurd Hortemo, a senior doctor at the Norwegian Medicines Agency at a press conference held jointly with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

All three individuals were under 50 years of age.

The European Medicines Regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), would investigate all three incidents, Hortemo said.

“They have very unusual symptoms: bleeding, blood clots and a low number of blood platelets,” Steinar Madsen, medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told NRK.

“They’re pretty sick … We take it very seriously,” he said, adding that authorities had received notification of the cases on Saturday.

AstraZeneca said an analysis of its safety data covering reported cases of more than 17 million doses of vaccines administered showed no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia, with low levels of platelets.

“In fact, the number of reports of such events for the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine does not exceed the number that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population,” said a spokeswoman for the ‘company.

These trends or patterns were also not observed during clinical trials of the vaccine, he added.

Before Denmark and Norway stopped launching the AstraZeneca vaccine, Austria stopped using a batch of shots while investigating a death from clotting disorders and a disease from a pulmonary embolism.

The EMA said Thursday that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed its risks and that it could continue to be administered.

Europe is struggling to accelerate the deployment of vaccines following delays in the delivery of Pfizer and AstraZeneca, although in some countries cases have increased.