A medical worker prepares a dose of Oxford/AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre in Antwerp, Belgium March 18, 2021. REUTERS/Yves Herman
COPENHAGEN: Denmark will keep its two-week suspension of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine and decide on its future use next week following more investigations, the head of the country's health authority said on Friday, as several European countries resumed its use.
"We need time to get to the bottom of this," Soren Brostrom, head of the Danish Health Authority said at a press conference.
"We need to dig deeper into these rare conditions, described both in Denmark and other countries, look into causal relations and see if there are other explanations," he said.
Several European countries last week suspended use of the vaccine following reports of rare instances of blood clots in some people who had been vaccinated.
However, on Friday nearly a dozen of them resumed use of the shots, after the EU's drug watchdog (EMA) on Thursday said it was convinced the vaccine's benefits outweighed the possible risks.
Denmark said its suspension would last for at least two weeks.
"We want to buy ourselves a little more time, and we think we can justify that because a suspension of two, three or four weeks won't have big consequences," Brostrom said.
