- Ireland on Sunday temporarily halted its use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19
vaccine . - The rollout was paused after Norway reported cases of serious blood clotting post-inoculation.
- Several countries have paused rollouts, but it's unclear if the blood clots are linked to the shot.
Ireland on Sunday became the latest country to suspend use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine after more reports came out of Norway of serious blood clotting in some recipients.
According to The Irish Times, the Irish National Immunization Advisory Committee's deputy chief medical officer, Ronan Glynn, said that while the rollout had been temporarily deferred it had "not been concluded that there is any link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and these cases."
The NIAC said it would nevertheless wait for "more reassuring data," describing the pause as precautionary. The NIAC plans to meet again this week to discuss the suspension of the vaccine.
The BBC reported that more than 110,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine had already been administered in Ireland. That makes up 20% of all COVID-19 vaccines given to date in the country.
There have been more than 226,000 COVID-19 cases in Ireland and 4,534 deaths.
Denmark, Iceland, and Norway, Bulgaria, and Thailand have suspended use of the vaccine, which was jointly developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
Insider also reported that five EU countries - Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and Latvia - had stopped using a specific batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine after the death of a vaccinated person. The batch had consisted of 1 million doses that were sent to 17 EU countries.
In a statement to CNN, AstraZeneca defended the vaccine, saying there were no quality issues with the vaccine and "no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or thrombocytopenia" for those who had received it.
The World Health Organization has echoed AstraZeneca's statement, saying no link has been established between the COVID-19 vaccine and blood clots.
AstraZeneca's vaccine has been granted conditional marketing authorization or emergency use in more than 50 countries, and millions of doses have been administered, though it has not yet filed for an emergency-use authorization in the US.