Last checked at 
LISBON, March 15 (Reuters) - Portugal temporarily suspended
AstraZeneca COVID-19 shots on Monday, following on the heels of
several other European countries amid concerns over possible
serious side-effects.
Earlier, Spain, France, Germany and Italy had joined
Denmark, Norway and several others in suspending use of the
vaccine after reports of blood clots in some patients who had
received the vaccine.
Graça Freitas, head of the health authority DGS, told a news
conference that although the side effects were "extremely
severe", they were "extremely rare", adding no such cases ahd
been reported in Portugal so far.
The World Health Organisation said there was no evidence
that the incidents are caused by the vaccine developed by
AstraZeneca, an Anglo-Swedish company, with Oxford University.
The EU's EMA medicines regulator said it would meet on
Thursday to analyse the situation and reaffirmed its view that
the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks.
Portugal, which has suffered 814,513 cases and 16,694
deaths, has so far administered around 1.1 million vaccine
doses, with the vast majority of shots administered being those
produced by Pfizer-BioNTech.
Henrique Gouveia e Melo, the head of Portugal's vaccination
taskforce, said the AstraZeneca shots that have so far arrived
in Portugal would be kept in storage until further notice.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Gareth Jones)
