Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he is not worried by news of the suspension of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine by some European countries after reports of blood clots in a handful of people.
Mr Morrison said he was not personally concerned of reports of blood clots when asked on Friday.
“The TGA obviously looks at these reports when they come through, but they do their own batch testing … on the batches going out across Australia,” Mr Morrison said.
He said Australia would not pause its AstraZeneca rollout in line with Denmark, Norway and Iceland as this “is not the view of our medical advisors”.
Austria had paused its shots for two weeks during the investigation of a death from coagulation disorders and an illness from a pulmonary embolism.
A 60-year-old woman in Denmark formed a blood clot and died after being given the AstraZeneca vaccine from the same batch used in Austria, and there have been 22 cases of such events reported among the three million people who have received the vaccine as of 9 March, according to the European medicine regulator EMA.
EMA stated there was no evidence linking AstraZeneca to the cases and the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risk of thromboembolic events.