Croatia has recorded the first case of death, allegedly associated with side effects from vaccination with the British-Swedish drug AstraZeneca. This was reported on Friday, March 12, by the national television HRT with reference to the Croatian Agency for Medicines and Medical Products (HALMED).
According to him, a 91-year-old Croatian citizen died of pulmonary thromboembolism after being vaccinated with AstraZeneca.
The agency clarified that the insufficient volume of medical documentation does not allow establishing a causal relationship between the death of a woman and the vaccination. In this regard, the organization sent AstraZeneca a request for additional information to establish the cause of death of the citizen.
Earlier in the day, it was reported that after reports of the risk of serious consequences after vaccination with the drug AstraZeneca, Croatians began to refuse the vaccine.
Also on Friday, the spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) Margaret Harris expressed the opinion that the benefits of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine outweigh the negative reviews about it. In this regard, she recommended to continue using the drug.
On March 11, Denmark decided to suspend vaccination with AstraZeneca. The country’s Minister of Health Magnus Heunike said that it has not yet been possible to establish the exact connection between vaccination and the formation of blood clots, but the country wants to prevent complications and considers it important to conduct an investigation.
Following Denmark, the authorities in Italy, Norway and Iceland, as well as a number of Spanish regions, made a similar decision for precautionary reasons. The authorities of Estonia advised to refuse vaccination with the drug for people prone to thrombosis.
In addition, the Lareb Center for Side Effects in the Netherlands received a report of a suspected thrombosis in a patient after being vaccinated against coronavirus with AstraZeneca.
AstraZeneca, in response to this decision of the countries, issued a statement in which it noted that its drug for coronavirus, according to the results of clinical trials, showed good tolerance in patients.
For its part, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recommended that EU countries continue to use the vaccine, indicating that the investigation of cases of thromboembolic complications is ongoing and there is no evidence that vaccination caused them.