Denmark stops all use of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine

Denmark has become the first country to stop using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in all age groups because of a putative link to a blood disease.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Picture: AFP

Denmark has become the first country to stop using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in all age groups because of a putative link to a blood disease that the government believes to affect about one in 40,000 recipients.

The Danish authorities had been among the first European governments to suspend the jab at the start of March amid early reports of people developing life-threatening blood clots several days after being given their first dose.

While other EU member states have resumed administering the vaccine to older adults, Denmark provisionally withdrew it for the past five weeks. On Wednesday the Danish health authority said that the pause would be made permanent. The 149,000 people who have had a first AstraZeneca dose will receive a different vaccine for their second shot. It is expected to delay the country’s vaccination campaign by more than a month.

“Of course it’s a pity that we’re in this situation,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Danish television. “We always knew that problems will arise along the way when you’re rolling out so many vaccines but we will continue apace with the other vaccines.”

Denmark’s concerns relate to a cluster of conditions including a low level of platelets, cell fragments in the blood that help it to clot, and occasionally fatal clots in the brain or abdomen.

The EU medical regulator has catalogued 44 suspected cases among the 25 million people who have been given the AstraZeneca vaccine. It concluded there was possibly a causal link. Older adults appear to be at a lower risk.

This week Danish medical scientists published a preliminary case report on the first person in the country to fall ill with one of the diseases after taking the AstraZeneca jab.

The unnamed woman, 60, who had previously been diagnosed with high blood pressure, first experienced a light headache. She was taken to hospital with acute abdominal pain a week after her jab. She suffered a stroke and died six days later.

The Times