Some European countries have stopped using the sights over fear of a blood clot, but WHO and Germany see no cause for concern.
Bulgaria has suspended the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, joining a small number of European countries that have stopped its use after reports that some recipients developed bad blood clots.
Concerns about the safety of the vaccine arose on Sunday when Austria announced that it would stop using a batch of AstraZeneca images while investigating one person ‘s death from coagulation complications, and another’ s illness from pulmonary embolism.
Concerns were raised on Thursday when Denmark, Norway and Iceland said they were also banning the use of the vaccine, implemented by Oxford University.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said in a statement on Friday that the use of the vaccine would be stopped “until all doubts have been dispelled and as long as experts do not guarantee that it will not be danger to the people ”.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have expressed confidence about the safety of the vaccine and have continued to distribute it.
“Yes, we should continue to use the AstraZeneca vaccine,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters Friday.
“There’s no sign of not using it,” she said.
Harris’ comments came after the EMA – the EU medicines regulator that has approved the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the bloc, on Thursday said its benefits outweighed the risks and could continue. .
Similarly, German Health Minister Jens Spahn on Friday criticized a ban on the use of AstraZeneca vaccine doses in some countries, saying that “the benefit… far outweighs the risk”.
Spahn said he had consulted with EMA experts and could confidently say that there was no apparent collection of thrombosis cases in connection with its use.
‘Adverse side effects’
AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish multinational group, said on Thursday it had found no evidence of a higher risk of pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis in safety data of more than 10 million records, even when they were considering subgroups based on age, gender, production badge or country of use.
But Danish health authorities said they would not use the company’s injection for two weeks amid “reports of possible side effects, both from Denmark and other European countries”.
They did not say how many cases of blood clots were reported there, but confirmed a 60-year-old Danish woman, who received an AstraZeneca bullet from the same batch used in Austria, formed a blood clot and died.
Following the Danish move, Norway announced that it was also banning the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Italy and Romania at the same time announced that they had stopped vaccinating people with one batch of the COVID-19 vaccine at AstraZeneca.
Romania said it had stopped using doses from the same batch in question in Italy.
The ban in Austria, however, included a different batch of the vaccine. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Luxembourg have also banned the use of the Austrian-announced badge.
Sterghios Moschos, a molecular biologist at Northumbria University UK, said governments were doing the right thing to “stop and make sure everything was OK” before proceeding with further practice.
“It is an appropriate response, there is a concern that has been raised, and it needs to be looked at carefully and independently,” Moschos told Al Jazeera.
“But there is the potential, on average, for … something a little wrong with a batch of the vaccine.”