Ireland temporarily suspended AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine “out of an abundance of caution” on Sunday, citing reports from the Norwegian Medicines Agency regarding a cluster of serious blood clotting in some recipients there.
The deputy chief medical officer, Dr Ronan Glynn, said Ireland’s advisory body on vaccines had recommended that deployment of the AstraZeneca jab should be “temporarily deferred” with immediate effect. He stressed, though, that there was no proof that the vaccine had caused blood clots.
Three health workers in Norway who had recently received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and a low count of blood platelets, its health authorities said on Saturday.
The first reports of blood clots in people receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine came out of Austria and caused a flurry of concern, leading to a number of European countries, including Denmark.
AstraZeneca vaccinations make up 20% of the 590,000 shots administered among Ireland’s 4.9 million population, mainly to healthcare workers after its use was not initially recommended for those over 70 and the firm supplied far fewer vaccines to the European Union than agreed.
There have been 4,534 COVID-19-related deaths in Ireland. The number of cases per 100,000 people in the past 14 days fell to 155 from a high of over 1,500 in January, although officials are concerned over a slight rise in new cases in recent days.
