Three people in Norway were treated for “unusual symptoms” after AstraZeneca COVID-19 shots

OSLO (Reuters) – Three health workers in Norway who recently received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine are being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and low platelet counts, Norwegian health authorities said Saturday.

Norway halted the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday, following a similar move by Denmark. Iceland followed later.

“We don’t know if the cases are related to the vaccine,” Sigurd Hortemo, a senior physician at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told a news conference held with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

All three persons were under 50 years of age.

The European drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA,) would investigate the three incidents, Hortemo said.

“They have very unusual symptoms: bleeding, blood clots and a low platelet count,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told NRK broadcaster.

“They are quite sick … We are taking this very seriously,” he said, adding that the authorities had received notification of the cases on Saturday.

AstraZeneca said an analysis of its safety data on reported cases of more than 17 million vaccine doses administered had shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia – with low platelet counts.

“In fact, the reported numbers of events like this for COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca do not exceed those that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population,” said a company spokeswoman.

No such trends or patterns were seen in clinical trials for the vaccine either, she added.

Before Denmark and Norway stopped introducing the AstraZeneca vaccine, Austria stopped using a series of injections in the study of death from coagulation disorders and disease from pulmonary embolism.

The EMA said on Thursday that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed its risks and that it could continue to be administered.

Europe is struggling to accelerate vaccine roll-out following delivery delays by Pfizer and AstraZeneca, even though new cases have increased in some countries.