There are three healthcare professionals, all under 50.
“We don’t know if the cases are vaccine-related,” said Sigurd Hortemo of the Norwegian Medicines Agency at a press conference with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. He added that it would be investigated.
“They have very unusual symptoms: bleeding, blood clots and a low platelet count,” said Steinar Madsen, director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency. He noted that the matter was taken very seriously and that the authorities received information on these three cases on Saturday.
Norway, like several other European countries, has suspended vaccination with AstraZeneca.
AstraZeneca maintains that the vaccine safety data has been analyzed. 17 million doses have already been administered and the analysis has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism or venous thrombosis.
In fact, reported numbers of such events for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine are no greater than the number that would naturally occur in an unvaccinated population, a company spokeswoman said.
She added that such trends or patterns were also not observed during clinical trials of the vaccine.
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