Last checked at 
(Adds comment from Danish Medicines Agency; no comment from
AstraZeneca)
By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen
COPENHAGEN, March 20 (Reuters) - Denmark said on Saturday
that one person had died and another fell seriously ill with
blood clots and cerebral haemorrhage after receiving the
AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination.
The two, both hospital staff members, had both received the
AstraZeneca vaccine less than 14 days before getting ill, the
authority that runs public hospitals in Copenhagen said.
The Danish Medicines Agency confirmed it had received two
"serious reports", without giving further details. There were no
details of when the hospital staff got ill.
Denmark, which halted using the AstraZeneca vaccine on March
11, was among more than a dozen countries that temporarily
paused use of the vaccine after reports of cases of rare brain
blood clots sent scientists and governments scrambling to
determine any link.
Some countries including Germany and France this week
reversed their decision to suspend use of the vaccine following
an investigation into the reports of blood clots by the European
Union's drug watchdog, which said on Thursday it is still
convinced the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the
risks.
Denmark - along with Sweden and Norway - said on Friday they
needed more time to decide whether to use the vaccine.
"We prioritize reports of suspected serious side effects
such as these and examine them thoroughly to assess whether
there is a possible link to the vaccine," Tanja Erichsen, acting
director of Pharmacovigilance at the Danish Medicines Agency,
said in a tweet on Saturday.
"We are in the process of dealing with the two specific
cases."
European Medicines Agency (EMA) director Emer Cooke said on
Thursday the watchdog could not definitively rule out a link
between blood clot incidents and the vaccine in its
investigation into 30 cases of a rare blood clotting condition.
But she said the "clear" conclusion of the review was that
the benefits in protecting people from the risk of death or
hospitalisation outweighs the possible risks. The issue deserves
further analysis, the EMA said.
AstraZeneca, which developed the shot with Oxford
University, has said a review covering more than 17 million
people who had received its shots in the EU and Britain had
found no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
The company on Saturday declined to comment on the new cases
in Denmark, but referred to a statement published on Thursday,
in which its chief medical officer, Ann Taylor, said:
"Vaccine safety is paramount and we welcome the regulators'
decisions which affirm the overwhelming benefit of our vaccine
in stopping the pandemic. We trust that, after the regulators'
careful decisions, vaccinations can once again resume across
Europe."
(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen,
Editing by Alexander Smith and Frances Kerry)
