Three Norwegian people are being treated for “abnormal symptoms” after AstraZeneca COVID-19 shots

OSLO (Reuters) – Three health workers in Norway who recently received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine are being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and a low blood count, Norwegian health authorities said Saturday.

Norway halted the release of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday, following a similar move by Denmark. Iceland followed suit.

“We do not know whether the cases are related to the vaccine,” said Sigurd Hortemo, a senior doctor at the Norwegian Pharmaceutical Society at a news conference held in conjunction with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

All three were under the age of 50.

The European medicines regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA,) would investigate all three incidents, Hortemo said.

“They have very unusual symptoms: swelling, blood clots and a low number of blood clots,” Steinar Madsen, Medical Director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency told broadcaster NRK.

“They are very ill … We take this very seriously,” he said, adding that the authorities were notified on Saturday.

AstraZeneca said an examination of its safety data did not cover reported cases from more than 17 million doses of vaccine given no evidence that there was an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia – with low levels of pests.

“Indeed, the numbers of such incidents for AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine do not exceed the number that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population,” a company spokesperson said.

No such trends or patterns were observed during clinical trials for the vaccine, she said.

Before Denmark and Norway stopped distributing the AstraZeneca vaccine, Austria stopped using a batch of the pictures while investigating deaths from coagulation disorders and disease from pulmonary embolism.

The EMA said Thursday that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed its risks and could continue.

Europe is struggling to accelerate vaccine distribution following delivery delays from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, even though new cases are on the spike in some countries.