Norway has defended its decision to
suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after one patient died of a cerebral haemorrhage following the jab.
Sara Watle, a senior physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and one of those who made the decision, said the vaccine had been paused while more information is gathered.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme she said: “Because the situation was a bit unclear at the time we decided to put the AstraZeneca vaccine on pause, in order to get more of an overview of what was actually going on with these cases.”
She confirmed that several people in Norway had become very ill days after receiving
AstraZeneca jabs, including one person who died of an intracerebral haemorrhage. But she added: “We have not concluded a causal relationship.”
She said: “The cases have been young individuals who approximately five to 10 days after vaccination with AstraZeneca vaccine have gotten the symptoms of thromboembolic events, bleedings, also low platelet counts, and they have been in a really bad condition. So, so we’re looking at very rare events that all came at the same time in our country.”
When it was pointed out that blood clotting does occur normally, Watle said: “Yes, they absolutely do and that’s why we need to look more into these events and also look at our background rates in our country in order to get an overview of what this actually is representing.”
She added: “It will slow down the vaccination programme temporarily, but we also didn’t receive all of the doses we were supposed to do from AstraZeneca so actually the tempo isn’t slowed down that much yet.”
