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(Adds investigation of death of a vaccinated woman, official
quotes)
SOFIA, March 12 (Reuters) - Bulgaria on Friday temporarily
halted COVID-19 inoculations using the AstraZeneca
vaccine after a woman died hours after receiving a shot, and
said it wanted the European Medicine Agency (EMA) to dispel all
doubts about the vaccine's safety.
Several other countries have also temporarily suspended
their rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the EMA said on
Thursday the shots should continue to be administered, saying
the benefits outweighed any risks.
"Until all doubts are dispelled... we are halting
inoculations with this vaccine," Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko
Borissov said in a statement.
Health Minister Kostadin Angelov said a 57-year-old woman
from a village in southern Bulgaria had died of heart failure
some 15 hours after receiving an AstraZeneca shot on Thursday.
"This is a just a precautionary measure," Angelov told
reporters, appealing to those already inoculated to stay calm.
"We do not have any official data that proves a causal
connection."
Angelov said the woman who died had a history of heart
disease and suffered from obesity. The final medical
investigation into her death will be ready in seven days, but
the autopsy found no blood clots, he said.
Denmark, Norway and Iceland temporarily suspended their
AstraZeneca inoculations amid reports that blood clots had
formed in some who had received the shot.
AstraZeneca said on Thursday it had found no evidence of an
increased risk of pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis -
marked by the formation of blood clots - in safety data of more
than 10 million records, even when considering subgroups based
on age, gender, production batch or country of use.
Bulgaria, which is trying to speed up its vaccination
campaign, said it would keep AstraZeneca shots in stock pending
the checks, and would continue to administer Pfizer-BioNTech and
Moderna shots.
On Friday, Germany said it would continue to administer the
AstraZeneca vaccine and France said it had shown great efficacy.
(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova;
Editing by Alison Williams, William Maclean and Gareth Jones)
