Last checked at 
(Adds details and Catalonia lifting restrictions)
By Inti Landauro and Joan Faus
MADRID, March 11 (Reuters) - Spain has registered no cases
of blood clots related to AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine
so far and will continue administering the shots, Health
Minister Carolina Darias said on Thursday.
She spoke shortly after Danish health authorities announced
that they had suspended using the vaccine produced by
Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca after several cases of blood
clots, including one death.
Darias told La Sexta TV that minor side-effects from the
AstraZeneca shot have been reported in Spain and that she had
been informed of cases of blood clots among vaccinated people in
Austria, but "so far, no causal relation between the vaccine and
the blood clot events has been established".
Darias said the European Union's medicines regulator EMA was
evaluating the situation.
As the vaccine rollout has picked up speed in Spain, some
regions have begun lifting restrictions on economic and social
activity as the impact of the pandemic has ebbed in one of the
countries most battered by the virus, with over 71,000 deaths.
Catalonia's regional government said on Thursday it would
allow non-essential small shops to open on weekends and people
who live together to move freely within the northeastern region
from March 15. Currently, people cannot leave the county where
their municipality is located except for work or health reasons.
"There's been a slow but constant rhythm of decrease,"
Catalonia's chief health officer Alba Verges told a press
briefing.
The new measures will last for two weeks while other
restrictions remain in place, such as a night curfew and a ban
on leaving the region.
All semi-autonomous regions of Spain apart from the capital
Madrid have banned departures by residents during the upcoming
two long holiday weekends.
With an average of 207 cases in the past 14 days, Catalonia
is the Spanish region with the second highest infection rate
after Madrid.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro and Joan Faus, editing by Andrei
Khalip and Mark Heinrich)
