Boris Johnson gives his backing for the Oxford Covid vaccine amid blood clot fears in EU nations 

Boris Johnson yesterday insisted the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab was safe after the EU launched a probe into reports of blood clots in vaccinated Europeans.

The European Medicines Agency said it had received reports of 22 cases of blood clotting among the three million vaccinated with the jab on the Continent – including one person who died ten days later.

A host of European countries including Denmark, Norway and Iceland have halted the use of AstraZeneca jabs amid fears they cause blood clots, while Italy has suspended a batch following the death of a naval officer and another man.

But No 10 yesterday insisted the jab is safe and that Britons should continue to take it, pointing to the success the vaccination programme is having.

Mr Johnson’s spokesman said: ‘We’ve been clear that it’s both safe and effective, and when people are asked to come forward and take it, they should do so in confidence.’

‘And in fact you’re starting to see the results of the vaccine programme in terms of the (lower) number of cases we’re seeing across the country, the number of deaths, number of hospitalisations.’  

The decision by some countries to halt the vaccine came after a nurse in Austria, 49, died from a clot on Monday shortly after receiving the vaccine amid reports of similar cases across Europe, despite millions of doses being administered safely.

Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Luxembourg have also suspended the use of the same specific batch of vaccines given to the nurse, ABV5300, which was sent to 17 European countries and consisted of one million jabs.

Denmark, Norway and Iceland on Thursday went further, suspending the total use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine.

Italy’s medicine regulator banned a different batch of the jabs, ABV2856, after non-commissioned naval officer Stefano Paternò died of a cardiac arrest 24 hours after receiving a dose in Sicily, where a second man also died after receiving the jab.  

‘We are of course saddened by this news,’ said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on the decision to halt the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Frederiksen, who has pushed for the production of more vaccines and has formed a controversial alliance with Austria and Israel to do so, defended the Danish health authorities’ decision.

‘Things have gone well in Denmark, but there are some risks linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine that need to be examined more closely,’ she told reporters.

‘That seems to me to be the right way to proceed.’ 

But France’s health minister Olivier Veran said last night that the country has ‘no need’ to suspend use of the jab after he consulted with the French medicines agency which advised him against taking a similar action to other countries.

He said the agency urged him to follow the EU drug regulator’s ruling that AstraZeneca was still safe to use. ‘There is no need to suspend AstraZeneca,’ Veran told a news conference. 

Other European nations also signalled their intention to continue using the vaccine, including Sweden, Spain and The Netherlands.

Swedish authorities said they did not find sufficient evidence to stop vaccination with AstraZeneca’s jab.

‘There is nothing to indicate that the vaccine causes this type of blood clots,’ Veronica Arthurson, head of drug safety at the Swedish Medical Products Agency, told a news conference.

Spain on Thursday said it had not registered any cases of blood clots related to AstraZeneca’s vaccine so far and would continue administering the shots. 

Danish health minister Magnus Heunicke admitted it was too soon to conclude if ‘there is any connection’ between the vaccine and blood clotting, but added: ‘We act early, it needs to be thoroughly investigated.’

Denmark suspended the shots for two weeks after a 60-year-old woman, who was given an AstraZeneca shot from the same batch used in Austria, formed a blood clot and died, Danish health authorities said.

Their response was also prompted by reports ‘of possible serious side effects’ from other European countries. 

Heunicke said authorities were probing whether there was a link between having the jab and blood clotting, after several cases and one death.

So far, 138,148 Danes have received a shot with AstraZeneca’s vaccine in a country of 5.8 million. 

The Nordic country, which also uses vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is set to receive 2.6 million doses from AstraZeneca over the coming months.

Denmark’s Health Authority said the final date for when it expects all Danes to have been fully vaccinated would be pushed back by four weeks to August 15.  

EU regulators on January 30 approved the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying it was effective and safe to use, but many European leaders have frequently doubted the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine which has subsequently seen a low uptake compared to other jabs. 

French President Emmanuel Macron previously said the jab was ‘quasi-effective’ in over-65s. The claim was widely rejected by scientists and was criticised as a political move born out of post-Brexit ill will.

But France, along with a host of other European nations, then blocked use of the jab for the elderly. 

Last week, Mr Macron made a partial U-turn on the decision after a slow uptake of the Oxford jab among the French was seen to be contributing to the country’s sluggish immunisation programme.

Germany followed with its own U-turn, recommending the jab for the over-65s.

The scaremongering around the jab has led some Europeans to refuse to take it, with authorities in Germany forced to resort to threatening people who balk at it.

That has hampered Europe’s already-slow vaccine drive which has been plagued by supply issues and has seen just 10 per cent of people given at least one dose, compared to 36 per cent in the UK. 

Meanwhile yesterday, AstraZeneca said in a statement that its vaccine had met ‘clear and stringent’ safety standards before being approved for use in Europe in January.

An AstraZeneca spokeswoman told MailOnline: ‘We’re aware of the statement made today by Sundhedsstyrelsen [the Danish health authority] that they are currently investigating potential adverse events related to vaccination against COVID-19.

‘Patient Safety is the highest priority for AstraZeneca. Regulators have clear and stringent efficacy and safety standards for the approval of any new medicine, and that includes COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca. 

‘The safety of the vaccine has been extensively studied in Phase III clinical trials and Peer-reviewed data confirms the vaccine is generally well tolerated.’ 

‘Peer-reviewed data confirms the vaccine is generally well tolerated,’ the company said. And the UK’s Medicines And Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) suggested the number of blood clots reported in the EU is no greater than the amount that would occur naturally.

AstraZeneca’s share price was however down 2.28 percent in mid-afternoon trading in London. 

Dr Phil Bryan, the MHRA head of vaccines safety, said: ‘The Danish authorities’ action to temporarily suspend use of the vaccine is precautionary whilst they investigate. Blood clots can occur naturally and are not uncommon.’

Dr Bryan said more than 11million doses of the Oxford jab had been administered in the UK, adding: ‘Reports of blood clots received so far are not greater than the number that would have occurred naturally in the vaccinated population.

‘The safety of the public will always come first. We are keeping this issue under close review but available evidence does not confirm that the vaccine is the cause.’

Professor Stephen Evans, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the suspensions were ‘a super-cautious approach based on some isolated reports in Europe’.

He said the problem lay in ‘the enormous difficulty of distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence’, adding that Covid-19 itself was very strongly associated with blood clotting.

Denmark was first to announce its suspension this week, ‘following reports of serious cases of blood clots’ among people who had received the vaccine, the country’s Health Authority said in a statement.

The vaccine would be suspended for 14 days in Denmark.

It stressed the move was precautionary, and that ‘it has not been determined, at the time being, that there is a link between the vaccine and the blood clots’.

‘This is a cautionary decision,’ Geir Bukholm, director of infection prevention and control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), told a news conference.

FHI did not say how long the suspension would last.

‘We … await information to see if there is a link between the vaccination and this case with a blood clot,’ Bukholm said.

So far, 138,148 Danes have received a shot with AstraZeneca’s vaccine in a country of 5.8 million.

Denmark’s Health Authority said the final date for when it expects all Danes to have been fully vaccinated would be pushed back by four weeks to Aug. 15.

The Nordic country, which also uses vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is set to receive 2.6 million doses from AstraZeneca over the coming months.

Magnus Heunicke said: ‘At present it can not be concluded whether there is a connection. We are acting early, it must be thoroughly investigated.’ 

As of March 9, 22 cases of blood clots had been reported among more than three million people vaccinated in the European Economic Area, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said.

Denmark however suspended the use of all of its AstraZeneca supply, as did Iceland and Norway in subsequent announcements on Thursday citing similar concerns. 

Denmark’s decision comes days after Austria suspended use of a particular batch of the drug, ABV5300, because a woman died within 10 days of the jab. 

Another three cases of blood clotting issues had been reported in Austria from people who had also taken the vaccine. 

One of those patients, a 35-year-old woman, developed a pulmonary embolism – a blockage of an artery on the lung – but is now recovering.

The EMA said that the batch which had been singled-out in Austria, labelled ABV5300, comprised one million doses and had been delivered to 17 EU countries.

Italy suspended use of a separate batch after two Italians died, and Italian authorities decided to halt delivery of a different batch of AstraZeneca jabs over safety fears.

‘Following the reporting of some serious adverse events… AIFA has decided, as a precaution, to issue a ban on the use of this batch throughout the national territory,’ AIFA said in a statement.

It said that it ‘reserves the right to take further measures, if necessary,’ in coordination with the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

But it stressed that at the moment there had been no established link between the administration of the vaccine and the alleged side-effects.

The batch mentioned by the Italian regulator, batch ABV2856, is different to the ABV5300 suspended by Austria and other countries.

It has been linked to the death of Stefano Paternò in Sicily this week after he suffered a cardiac arrest 24 hours after taking a jab.

A policeman, Davide Villa, 50, also died 12 days after receiving a vaccine from the same batch.

The Italian ministry of health will investigate the possible links between their deaths and the jabs while the batch of doses is on pause.  

The European Medicines Agency said there was ‘no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions (clots), which are not listed as side effects with this vaccine’. It has opened an investigation into the quality of the ABV5300 batch.

The investigation by the EU comes after a humiliating U-turn by European leaders who have given their backing to the vaccine after claiming it was ineffective at the height of their row with the vaccine-maker and Britain in January.

During the ongoing row, the EU has furiously blamed Britain for its woeful vaccine rollout, blocked doses from leaving to Australia and begged the USA to give them its surplus doses.

Last week, Italy stood at the European vanguard as it embargoed 250,000 doses which were destined for Sydney.

The move raised eyebrows Down Under, as Australia’s finance minister Simon Birmingham said it is ‘a reminder of the desperation that exists in other parts of the world, compared with the very good position we found ourselves in here’.

‘We are obviously disappointed and frustrated by this decision,’ he added.

Over the weekend, it was reported that the EU had gone cap in hand to Washington to beg them to provide some of their surplus AstraZeneca.

It’s a humiliating U-turn for Brussels whose leaders had wildly claimed that the AstraZeneca vaccine was ineffective earlier this year.

Emmanuel Macron was accused of anti-vax propaganda when he claimed the jab was only ‘quasi-effective’ for elderly patients.

French PM Jean Castex has since endorsed the vaccine, saying it is just as effective as any other approved in the EU.  

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