Indonesia, France, Italy, Germany join other nations in pausing AstraZeneca vaccine

Indonesia has joined some European countries to suspend the vaccine rollout amid fears of blood clots.

A woman receives the AstraZeneca vaccine in Dippoldiswalde, Germany yesterday. Picture: Getty Images

Indonesia has become the latest country to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca COVD-19

vaccine “pending review” from the World Health Organisation, it announced late on Monday,

citing reports of blood clotting in some recipients of the jab.

“The food and drug monitoring agency will delay the implementation of AstraZeneca as we

await confirmation from the WHO,” the country’s health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin told a

parliamentary hearing.

Indonesia’s food and drug monitoring agency (BPOM) had authorised the vaccine for

emergency use after the government received 1.1 million doses of AstraZeneca via the

COVAX procurement scheme on March 8. Another 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines

are to be delivered through the international vaccine sharing scheme in coming months.

Indonesia has one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in Asia and has struggled to

control the spread of the virus.

It began rolling out the Chinese-developed Sinovac vaccine in late January in the hope of

inoculating 181.5 million people by next January — a target most health experts say it will not be able to reach because of its slow start, vaccine procurement and logistical issues.

Just last week, Indonesia’s Covid-19 task force said the newly-arrived AstraZeneca vaccines

would be used to immunise the elderly and public sector workers, including teachers, market

vendors, and religious figures. 

But on Monday the Health Ministry said it was advised to “postpone” distribution of the

AstraZeneca vaccine in a meeting last week with the Indonesian Technical Advisory Group

on Immunisation (ITAGI) after 30 reports of clots among almost five million AstraZeneca

recipients across Europe.

“The ITAGI is working with BPOM to review the side effects of AstraZeneca and

distribution plans have been kept on hold until then,” said Director General of Disease

Prevention and Control Maxi Rein Rondonuwu.

“We have not scrapped the use of AstraZeneca, but we are waiting for review results from

countries that have used it.”

A health ministry spokesperson said the ministry would also consider the views of

international agencies, such as the European Medicines Agency which has said that the

benefits of AstraZeneca outweighs any known side effects.

Germany, Italy, France, and Spain all halted the use of AstraZeneca on Monday, after several

other European countries, as well as Thailand, and Congo said last Friday they had suspended

use of the vaccine.

The WHO has recommended all countries continue using the vaccine and to “avoid panic”.

“So far we do not find an association between these events (blood clotting) and the vaccine,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told AFP.

As of Monday, 4.1 million Indonesians had received their COVID-19 shots.

The Health Ministry said it aimed to vaccinate up to 1.5 million people per day in the third

and fourth quarter of the year to reach the targeted number of recipients.

France, Italy, Germany halt AstraZeneca rollout

France, Italy and Germany have joined a growing list of European countries suspending the use of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine over fears it causes deadly blood clots.

Overnight (AEDT), France, Italy and Germany stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine after Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Bulgaria had suspended its use. Austria is also investigating some medical issues and whether they were related to the vaccine.

Last Thursday, Denmark was one of the first countries to raise the alarm about AstraZeneca pending an investigation into the death of a Danish woman.

“Both we and the Danish Medicines Agency have to respond to reports of possible serious side-effects, both from Denmark and other European countries,” the director of the Danish Health Authority, Soren Brostrom, said in a statement.

A vial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Picture: Getty Images

But the latest scare centres around the death of a health worker from a brain haemorrhage in Norway, while three other Norwegians aged under 50 were admitted to hospital with severe cases of blood clots or brain haemorrhages. Last week, Italy had ruled out using one particular batch of the vaccine but has now broadened the suspension to all batches until further advice from the European Medicines Agency.

The EMA has scheduled two emergency meetings this week, one by its safety committee on Tuesday to review latest health data associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine in conjunction with the pharmaceutical maker and British authorities and then an extraordinary meeting on Thursday to announce its position.

French president Emmanuel Macron said he would wait until this review was complete before restarting any AstraZeneca vaccinations.

The EMA’s moves prompted Germany to pause AstraZeneca vaccinations as a precautionary step.

In a statement, the EMA attempted to allay rising panic about the vaccine, saying: “Events involving blood clots, some with unusual features such as low numbers of platelets, have occurred in a very small number of people who received the vaccine.

“Many thousands of people develop blood clots annually in the European Union for different reasons. The number of thromboembolic events overall in vaccinated people seems not to be higher than that seen in the general population.”

"This does not necessarily mean these events are linked to #COVID19 vaccination, but it’s routine practice to investigate them, and it shows that the surveillance system works and that effective controls are in place"-@DrTedroshttps://t.co/yMp9JuW6gj

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 15, 2021

The uncertainty surrounding the safety of the vaccine comes as the UK is preparing to shortly inoculate more than 800,000 people a day with the AstraZeneca vaccine. So far more than 23 million people have received at least one jab in the UK.

British prime minister Boris Johnson said he remained highly confident in the vaccine, which was developed with Oxford University researchers.

He said UK regulators saw no reason at all to discontinue the vaccination program.

“They believe that they (the AstraZeneca vaccine) are effective, highly effective in driving down not just hospitalisations but also serious disease and mortality. We continue to be very confident about the program.”

World Health Organisation chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said “we do not want people to panic”.

She said at least 2.6 million people had died of coronavirus and recommended that countries continued vaccinating with AstraZeneca, pending more updates tomorrow or at any time when there is a change to advice.