france germany and italy have become the
latest countries to suspend use of the
oxford astrazeneca jab
over concerns about blood clots the
moves come as the world health
organization appealed to governments not
to pause vaccination campaigns
germany's health ministry said its
suspension took effect
immediately earlier the republic of
ireland and the netherlands made a
similar decision
despite the world health organization
saying there is no indication of a link
between the vaccine and blood clots
they followed denmark bulgaria and
iceland which brings the total number of
european nations in total to have paused
their rollout of the vaccination to nine
while some european countries have
stopped using certain batches of the
drug
as a precautionary measure the european
medicines agency is currently carrying
out a review into incidence of blood
clots
it says the vaccine's benefits continue
to outweigh its risks
about 17 million people in the european
union and the uk have received a dose of
the vaccine
with fewer than 40 cases of blood clots
reported
that's lower than would be found in a
normal population sample
well i'm joined now by jenny hill in
berlin uh
jenny the the list of countries in the
eu who are clearly concerned is growing
yes um germany made this surprise
announcement just over an
hour ago and france and italy have
followed suit saying they're temporarily
suspending the use of the astrazeneca
vaccine
until the european medicines agency
gives a statement give some advice
which is expected tomorrow afternoon and
here in germany i can tell you that the
decision was announced
on the basis of a recommendation from
the paul erlich institute this is the
body which advises the government here
on vaccines and vaccination and it's
published the statement actually upon
which this decision has been based and
it says
that um there have been new cases in
recent days
of people who've developed what they
describe as a special type
of a rare blood clot in the brain
following vaccination with the
astrazeneca
vaccine and that's why they want to
investigate further now they didn't say
how many people had been affected or
indeed how badly but actually just as we
came to where i noticed that the
the national broadcaster here usually
very reliable is quoting
the country's health minister and he's
talking about out of 1.6 million
doses that have been given that's 1.6
million people of course these are first
doses
and just seven people seem to have been
affected so
um that's not what's coming straight
from the horse's mouth if you like from
the institute
that advises the government but if this
report is correct the numbers are indeed
very low and that perhaps chimes with
other national governments who are
saying look there's
really no need to suspend um the
vaccinations at this stage a very
controversial decision
and i think one which is going to cause
well it is already causing we can see it
here i'm anger and a lot of concern in
germany because
the vaccination program here has been
very slow to get going just over seven
percent of the population have received
a first dose case numbers are rising new
variants are spreading there's a lot of
concern about how this country is going
to get anywhere near back to normality
let alone do something about the
hundreds of people who are still dying
from covert every day um so to take
a vaccine that's an important vaccine
here out of circulation you know isn't a
decision that's going to be have
have been made lightly and by the
government the health minister saying
it's not a political decision it's a
decision based on facts
but it is he added purely precautionary
um we've heard from france it's reported
that the suspension there will be
pending the european watchdog decision
at midday on tuesday i mean it it
looks as though there is obviously some
coordinated concern
perhaps not i think there will be a lot
of people who suspect
a political motive perhaps um behind
these decisions um there were of course
big problems between
um eu countries and astrazeneca when it
came to initially delivery
of doses astrazeneca are not not able to
fulfill
um doses i i think that's probably a
little bit conspiracy
theory because of course these
governments are dealing with high
and rising case numbers now many of
these countries and to
as i said to take a vaccine out of
circulation is a very serious decision
and of course the knock-on effects could
also be
really very significant astrazeneca um
has had a bit of an image problem here
in germany that's largely because
you'll perhaps remember at first germany
along with a number of other european
countries decided that
whilst the european medicines agency
said it should be given to
every age group germany decided that it
wouldn't initially license it for
the for use in the over 65s because they
said they wanted to see more data about
its efficacy
in those age groups it was a
controversial decision at the time
and many here would say it did actually
cost the country dear because there has
been a slightly slower take-up of that
vaccine partially because
we're hearing reports um of medics in
particular medical staff who say they
don't want to take the astrozoo because
they're concerned about its efficacy
as a result of that initial decision
this of course will do
nothing to reassure the population even
if
um the suspension is removed again
perhaps as quickly as tomorrow
pending that decision by the european
medicine agency
jenny hill thanks very much indeed for
that
well i'm joined now by our health
correspondent nick trigle nick
people are going to want to know what
data is this based on because
so many european governments showing
this level of concern
must be an indication of some serious
worry
well the data that has been provided by
astrazeneca
shows that there has been 37 cases
of blood clots now that's out of more
than 17 million people who've been
vaccinated
with the jab and that level is below
what you'd expect
in a population so when a vaccine is
rolled out like this
the regulatory agencies and health
authorities
across the world look at what's
happening
what level of adverse events are being
seen
after vaccination to see if it's just
coincidence if these would
naturally occur anyway or if it's caused
by the vaccine and those
levels of blood clots being seen are
below what you'd actually
expect so it has surprised a number of
vaccination experts in the uk
and they have questioned why when the
world health organization
has said it's safe to use the european
and uk regulatory
agencies are not saying it should be
suspended at all why individual nations
are doing this it is causing questions
i mean in terms of the sort of toughness
of regulation as i understand it
the uk is very stringent isn't it
yes i mean they've been monitoring uh
the
um astrazeneca vaccine and all the other
ones all the way through the
the clinical trials and then as it's
been
rolled out uh in the real world i mean
in the uk
the uh astrazeneca vaccine has been
given to more than
10 million people and it's that re that
evidence for that shows it's reducing
serious illness from covid
it's reducing the numbers of people who
are dying it's important to remember
covid actually increases the risk of
blood clots
greatly so even if there is a
a small risk a rare
side effect that does cause blood clots
one thing to consider is that
actually covid has a higher risk of
blood clots anyway
so you've got to see the bigger picture
with these and this is what
i think a lot of vaccination experts are
saying today but obviously we'll have to
wait to see what the european
uh drugs regulator says tomorrow we're
just hearing
a line here that the covert 19 vaccine
trial data on astrazeneca is now under
review by an independent review board
according to the nh
nih director in the u.s
um we've heard mention also about
um some unusual type of blood clot
affecting the brain
do you know what mechanism there could
be to link this vaccine
to blood clots well we've been speaking
to a few people today about
what could be the sort of biological
cause of this is there a plausible
expla explanation um
there isn't uh in the general population
they say but you
you do not know until you roll out a
vaccine to large numbers of people
uh what kind of rare events might
happen so when they when they do the
trials uh
the astrozenica vaccine was uh tested on
around 30 000 people
across the globe you're not going to
pick up on those very very rare
uh occurrences so it's certainly
possible
uh that this could be happening and
there could be a cause here but as yet
no one
uh is suggesting they've definitely
proved that it could just be
uh coincidence okay thank you very much
indeed nick ernictrigler health
correspondent