Denmark has completely phased out the coronavirus vaccine developed by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. This was announced on April 14 by the country’s health department.
“According to our assessment, based on scientific findings, there is a real risk of serious side effects associated with the use of the vaccine <...>, so we decided to exclude it from our vaccination program,” said the head of the department, Seren Brostrem.
Thus, Denmark became the first European state to ban the use of the drug from AstraZeneca for all population groups.
The Danish authorities suspended the use of the drug on March 11. The reason for this was cases of blood clots and blood clotting disorders in vaccinated people and several deaths. The vaccination campaign in Denmark uses vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna.
It was also decided to refrain from using the American Johnson & Johnson vaccine for a certain period of time.
On April 14, it became known that the European Commission in 2022 will not renew contracts for the supply of vaccines against coronavirus with AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. It is noted that in the future the European Union is going to use RNA vaccines instead of vector vaccines.
On April 13, it was reported that the United States officially recommended that Johnson & Johnson suspend vaccination with its drug due to the discovery of thrombosis in six people after vaccination, one of the patients died. In turn, the manufacturing company because of the incident announced the suspension of the introduction of the vaccine in European countries.
On April 8, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) added a thrombosis warning to AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria COVID-19 vaccine. The statement said that thrombosis with low platelet counts was observed after vaccination in very rare cases. The regulator noted that it will monitor the effectiveness and safety of the Vaxzevria vaccine.
In March, several European countries stopped using the drug due to the increased incidence of thrombosis after vaccination. So, after vaccination with the drug from AstraZeneca in Denmark, a patient died. In Norway, three health workers were hospitalized with blood clots after vaccinations, one of them died. Similar cases were recorded in Slovakia, Italy and other states. However, later vaccination in a number of countries was resumed on the recommendations of the EMA and the World Health Organization.