Denmark to continue COVID-19 vaccination without AstraZeneca

The Danish Health Authority on Wednesday announced it will no longer use the AstraZeneca vaccine due to worrying feedback from the ongoing safety monitoring of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The Dsh Health Authority on Wednesday announced it will no longer use the AstraZeneca vaccine due to worrying feedback from the ongoing safety monitoring of the COVID-19 vaccines.

In a statement, the authority said it will continue its vaccine rollout without the AstraZeneca vaccine. On March 11, the Dsh Health Authority had paused the use of the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca.

Since then, the Dsh vaccination effort has continued with the vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

"Based on the scientific findings, our overall assessment is there is a real risk of severe side effects associated with using the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca. We have, therefore, decided to remove the vaccine from our vaccination program," said Director-General Soren Brostrom.

The Dsh Health Authority has decided to continue the rollout at this time without AstraZeneca, but this does not exclude that we may re-introduce the vaccine at a later date if the situation changes, the statement said.

"We are basically in agreement with EMA (European Medicines Authority) assessment regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine. That is why it is important to emphasise that it is still an approved vaccine. And I understand if other countries in a different situation than us choose to continue using the vaccine. If Denmark were in a completely different situation and in the midst of a violent third outbreak, for example, and a healthcare system under pressure - and if we had not reached such an advanced point in our rollout of the vaccines - then I would not hesitate to use the vaccine, even if there were rare but severe complications associated with using it," said Brostrom.

Meanwhile, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Denmark reached 240,224 COVID-19 cases with 2,448 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

( With inputs from ANI )