Fiona Govan
REGIONAL health authorities in Castilla y Leon will suspend use of AstraZeneca vaccine, even as Spain’s central government insisted that they consider the jabs to be safe.
Castilla y Leon’s region announced on Wednesday that it will review whether to continue use of the Oxford developed vaccine pending the findings of a report by the European Medicines Agency.
EMA experts detailed in a report whether cases of blood clotting in adults who had recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine may be linked to the injections.
A statement published online read on Wednesday afternoon read: “The EMA’s safety committee has concluded today that unusual blood clots with low blood platelets should be listed as very rare side effects of the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine.”
But the EMA added that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.
The regional announcement from Castilla y Leon came even as Spain’s national government said again that they consider the vaccine to be safe.
“For us in Spain, what matters is what the EMA says, and so far they said that it’s safe and we will continue to vaccinate with AstraZeneca because we trust the experts and the EMA,” Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told reporters.
Last month Spain had suspended use of the AztraZeneca doses amid growing concern that one of the side-effects could be increased risk of blood clotting.
But it resumed the shots once the EMA found “the benefits clearly outweigh the risks”.
On Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the vaccination programme was accelerating and 33 million people, which is 70% of the adult population of Spain, would be fully inoculated by the end of August.
So far in Spain just over 9 million doses have been administered and 2,902,291 people have received two doses.
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