Italy, France, Germany join countries that have suspended AstraZeneca vaccine

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Italy and Germany on Monday joined Ireland and Holland as the latest European Union member states to suspend the use of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, Reuters reports. The decisions follow Norwegian reports of blood clots and brain hemorrhages among people who had taken the shot; Denmark, Norway, and Bulgaria have also suspended use of the vaccine.

The Italian medicines authority said the decision to suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine is a “precautionary and temporary measure” pending rulings by the European Medicines Agency, Reuters reports.

In its own statement, the Irish health ministry said its use of the vaccine had been “temporarily deferred;” Ireland and Holland suspended their AstraZeneca roll out on Sunday.

Over 350 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered worldwide, including 11 million in the UK.

According to the Times of Israel, an AstraZeneca spokesperson said that having analyzed cases from over 17 million doses, no evidence was found that the risk of blood clot conditions increased after the shot.

“In fact, the reported numbers of these types of events for COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca are lower than the number that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population,” the AstraZeneca spokesperson said.

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