An injection of the AstraZeneca vaccine (illustrative image).

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Salvatore Laporta / IPA / I / SIPA

European countries may continue to use AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, despite an investigation into blood clot cases that have prompted Denmark, Norway, Italy and Iceland to suspend injections , the European medicines regulator said on Thursday.

The position of the European Medicines Agency Safety Committee "is that the benefits of the vaccine continue to outweigh its risks and that the vaccine can continue to be administered while the investigation of thromboembolism cases is ongoing. "The EMA said in a statement.

22 cases among three million vaccinated

The European Agency also said that there is no evidence to date of a risk of increased blood clotting in people vaccinated against Covid-19.

"The information available to date indicates that the number of thromboembolisms in vaccinated people is not higher than that observed in the whole population," said the EMA in a statement sent by email to AFP, who questioned him about these measures.

The Amsterdam-based European regulator said it understood Denmark's decision to suspend use of the vaccine as a “precaution”.

The EMA stressed that its pharmacovigilance risk assessment committee was examining cases of strong blood clotting "reported in temporal association with the vaccine".

The committee "will continue its assessment and the EMA will communicate updates as soon as possible," said the European agency.

In its announcement on Austria on Wednesday, the EMA said there had been 22 "thromboembolisms" among three million people who received the vaccine in the European Economic Area, which includes Norway and Iceland.

Austria announced Monday that it had suspended the use of a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines after a 49-year-old nurse died of "serious blood clotting problems" days after being vaccinated.

Four other European countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Luxembourg - have also suspended the use of the vaccines in this million-dose batch, which was sent to 17 European countries.

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