NEW DELHI, Apr 14: Denmark has become the first country to drop altogether the use of AstraZeneca – Oxford University developed vaccine over suspected side-effects.
AstraZeneca-developed vaccine is being widely used in India under the brand name “Covishield” manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India under license.
Despite recommendations from the World Health Organization and European medicines watchdog to continue using the inoculation, “Denmark’s vaccination campaign will go ahead without the AstraZeneca vaccine,” Health Authority director Soren Brostrom told a media conference on Wednesday.
Denmark was the first country in Europe to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca jab in its vaccination rollout, after reports of rare but serious cases of blood clots among those that had received the vaccine.
More than a dozen countries followed suit but all but a few have since resumed the use after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) emphasised the benefits of the vaccine and deemed it “safe and effective”.
Denmark had, however, continued to hold off using the vaccine as it conducted investigations of its own. In Denmark, two cases of thrombosis, one of which was fatal, were linked to vaccinations after more than 140,000 people received the jab.
In the country of 5.8 million inhabitants, eight percent have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and 17 percent have received the first dose. Since suspending use of the AstraZeneca jab in March, Denmark has continued with the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna jabs.
(Manas Dasgupta)