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* Ireland hopes suspension may only be for a few days
* Reports in Norway more serious than elsewhere - officials
* AstraZeneca used to vaccinate one-in-five Irish recipients
(Adds AstraZeneca, UK medicine regulator's statement)
By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN, March 14 (Reuters) - Ireland became the latest
country to stop using AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine on
Sunday, temporarily suspending the shot "out of an abundance of
caution" after reports from Norway of serious blood clotting in
some recipients there.
Three health workers in Norway who had recently received the
AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were being treated in hospital for
bleeding, blood clots and a low count of blood platelets, its
health authorities said on Saturday.
Ireland's National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC)
recommended the temporary deferral pending the receipt of more
information from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in the
coming days.
AstraZeneca on Sunday said it had conducted a review
covering more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European
Union and the UK which had shown no evidence of an increased
risk of blood clots.
Denmark, Norway and Iceland have suspended the use of the
vaccine over clotting issues, while Thailand became the first
country outside of Europe to do so on Friday, delaying its
AstraZeneca rollout over the safety concerns in Europe.
Italy's northern region of Piedmont on Sunday said it would
stop using a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines after a teacher died
following his vaccination on Saturday. Austria also stopped
using a particular batch last week.
The EMA said on Friday that there is no indication that the
events were caused by the vaccination, a view that was echoed by
the World Health Organisation.
'WE MAY BE OVERREACTING'
Irish authorities received some reports of clotting similar
to those seen in Europe last week but nothing as serious as the
cases in Norway, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Ronan Glynn said.
Glynn said the fact that the Norwegian cases related to a
cluster of four unusual clotting events involving the brain in
30 to 40 year-olds raised the higher level of concern.
He said that one of the reasons Ireland acted now was that
it was due to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to people of a
similar age with serious underlying conditions next week.
"It may be nothing, we may be overreacting and I sincerely
hope that in a week's time that we will have been accused of
being overly-cautious," Glynn told national broadcaster RTE.
"Hopefully we will have data to reassure us in a few short
days and we will be back up and running with this."
AstraZeneca vaccinations make up 20% of the 590,000 shots
administered among Ireland's 4.9 million population, mainly to
healthcare workers after its use was not initially recommended
for those over 70 and the company supplied far fewer vaccines to
the EU than agreed.
There have been 4,534 COVID-19-related deaths in Ireland.
The number of cases per 100,000 people in the past 14 days fell
to 151 from a high of over 1,500 in January, although officials
are concerned over a slight rise in new cases in recent days.
Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill also
raised concerns over the suspension of AstraZeneca elsewhere. In
response to Ireland's decision, the UK's medicine regulator said
that while it was closely reviewing the reports, the available
evidence does not suggest the vaccine is the cause of the
clots.
Like the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland is much further
ahead in its programme and has inoculated more than 40% of the
adult population, relying heavily on AstraZeneca's vaccine.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, editing by Bernadette Baum,
Louise Heavens and Jane Merriman)
