[News] Italy, Norway and Denmark temporarily suspend vaccination with doses of Astrazeneca due to suspected cases of thrombi in vaccinated

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Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Luxembourg also suspended immunization with doses from the same batch as the other European countries.

This Thursday the Norwegian and Italian authorities announced that they are suspending the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19, after Denmark did the same by registering serious cases of thrombi in people who had received it.

The Danish General Directorate of Health had communicated hours before the suspension for 14 days of the vaccine applying a “precautionary” principle, since there was also one death, although a direct relationship has not yet been demonstrated.

"We are going to wait and see if there is any connection between the vaccine and these cases of thrombi," Geir Bukholm, director of infections at the Norwegian Public Health Institute (FHI), told a news conference today.

Norway, which is part of the European Economic Area but not of the European Union, has not registered cases of thrombi in people who have received this medication, but has decided to paralyze its use until the European Medicines Agency (EMA) studies the reports on coagulation problems diagnosed in various countries.

The Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) also reported this Thursday that it has temporarily suspended vaccination with a batch of the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca as a precaution, following reports of coagulation problems diagnosed in several European countries.

The agency has explained in a statement that after information about health problems detected in other European countries, it has blocked the inoculation of the doses of batch ABV2856.

Furthermore, it reserves the right to take further measures, when necessary, also in close coordination with the EMA.

The AIFA highlights that for now "no causal link has been established between the administration of the vaccine and these events" detected in other countries and that the necessary controls are being carried out, collecting the relevant clinical documentation.

The samples from this batch will be analyzed by the Italian National Institute of Health.

In parallel, the Syracuse Prosecutor's Office (Sicily, south) has opened an investigation to clarify whether the death of a 43-year-old military man, who suffered cardiac arrest in the last hours, is related to the AstraZeneca vaccine that he had recently received , according to EFE.

The Prosecutor's Office of Catania (Sicily, south) has also opened another file, at the moment without suspects, on the death of another policeman in his 50s, who died 12 days ago after receiving the vaccine from the same pharmaceutical company.

The EMA has assured this Thursday in the Netherlands that it is currently studying reports on coagulation problems diagnosed in several European countries coinciding with the receipt of an AstraZeneca vaccine and that it could issue "today or tomorrow" advice on the matter on the use of the drug in the European Union (EU).

The European regulator had assured on Wednesday in a preliminary analysis that it did not believe there was a specific problem with a lot of AstraZeneca recalled on Sunday by Austria as a precautionary measure, after the death of a person diagnosed with multiple thrombosis and the disease of another coinciding with your vaccination.

Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Luxembourg also suspended immunization with doses from that particular batch, which was received by 17 European Union countries, including Spain, Poland, Malta, France and Greece, according to the EMA.

Unlike its neighbors Norway and Denmark, Sweden has nevertheless refused to temporarily stop the use of this vaccine.

"We believe that there is not a sufficient basis to suspend vaccination with AstraZeneca," Veronica Arthurson, from the Swedish Medicines Agency, told the health authorities' press conference today.