Three people in Norway were treated for ‘unusual symptoms’ after AstraZeneca COVID-19 shots

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

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

“We do not know if the cases were linked to the vaccine,” said Sigurd Hortemo, a senior doctor at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, at a news conference held with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

All three individuals were under the age of 50.

The European Medicines Regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), will investigate the three incidents, Hortemo said.

“They have very unusual symptoms: bleeding, blood clots and a low platelet count,” Steinar Madsen, medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told NRK.

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

AstraZeneca said that an analysis of the safety data reported on cases of more than 17 million doses of vaccinations has no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia, with low platelet levels.

“In fact, the reported numbers of these types of events for COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca are no greater than the number that would naturally have occurred in the non-vaccinated population,” a company spokesman said.

Such trends or patterns were also not observed during clinical trials for the vaccine, she added.

Before Denmark and Norway discontinued the AstraZeneca vaccine, Austria stopped using a group of shots while investigating deaths due to coagulation disorders and an illness due to pulmonary embolism.

The EMA said on Thursday that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks and that it could still be administered.

Europe is struggling to accelerate the explosion of vaccines following delays in delivery of Pfizer and AstraZeneca, although new cases have increased in some countries.