COVID-19: Nigeria alerted as Denmark suspends use of AstraZeneca vaccine
Denmark has suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine after potential serious side effects.
The country says it is halting the use of the vaccine after several cases of blood clots among vaccinated people.
Health minister, Magnus Heunicke, tweeted Thursday that it wasn’t yet clear whether the clots were linked to the vaccine.
“At present it can not be concluded whether there is a connection. We are acting early, it must be thoroughly investigated,” he said.
One person was diagnosed with multiple blood clots in the vessels, and died 10 days after vaccination, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Wednesday .
The EMA noted two other “thrombotic events” in people that had received the vaccines.
“There is currently no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions, which are not listed as side effects with this vaccine,” the EMA said.
The vaccine has been granted conditional marketing authorisation or emergency use in more than 50 countries , including Nigeria which received almost four million doses.
Denmark joins five other countries – Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Latvia – who suspended the vaccine after a 49-year-old Austrian woman died of ‘severe blood coagulation problems.’