THE Norway will delay its decision on whether or not to resume using the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 for up to three weeks, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) announced today, according to the APE.
Authorities suspended the vaccine on March 11 after a small number of younger people who had been vaccinated were treated for a combination of blood clots, bleeding and low platelet counts, some of whom later died.
“We have decided to extend the suspension and make a new decision until April 15,” FHI chief Camilla Stoltenberg told NRK.
“We started procedures to see if there is causality and to have a better basis for determining the real risk and a cost-benefit analysis for different age groups. In order to have more knowledge, it is necessary to have more time “.
Norway is one of more than a dozen European countries that have suspended the use of the vaccine due to safety concerns, although most have since resumed its use on the recommendation of the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
However, the vaccine remains suspended in Denmark, while Finland, Iceland and Sweden have resumed its use but for older age groups.
The EMA said the benefits of the vaccine in protecting people from coronavirus-related death or illness outweighed the potential risks. The World Health Organization also supported the vaccine.
THE AstraZeneca has said that a review of vaccine safety data in more than 17 million people who have been vaccinated in Britain and the European Union with its vaccine showed no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
Norway has recorded five cases in which people under the age of 55 and in good health who were vaccinated with AstraZeneca were later admitted to hospital with a combination of blood clots, bleeding and low platelet counts, three of whom later died.
A sixth patient, who had received the vaccine, also relatively young and without known health problems, died of cerebral hemorrhage combined with low platelet counts, health officials said.
So far no connection has been established with the Swedish-British company vaccine, but a Norwegian medical team said it sees in these rare but serious cases the consequence of a “strong immune response” caused by the blood serum.
“The most important thing is to determine whether there is a causal relationship between vaccination and these very serious side effects, as we suspect,” Stoltenberg said.
The suspension is expected to delay the Norwegian vaccination program by one to two weeks, the institute said. “Those who have already received a first dose of the vaccine will not receive a second dose at this stage,” he said.
Norway uses vaccines developed by Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna and hopes to use the vaccine of Johnson & Johnson when its supply becomes available in Europe.
The country, which is not a member of the European Union, gets its vaccines through the European procurement program thanks to Sweden, which buys more vaccines than it needs and then supplies its neighboring country.
Norway has one of the lowest infection and death rates in Europe since the pandemic began early last year, but is now seeing a sharp rise in hospital admissions due to more contagious strains of the virus.
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