Germany will stop administering AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, a spokesman for the health ministry said on Monday, making the country the latest of several European nations to pause following reports of recipients being taken ill.
The ministry said the new guidelines implemented a recommendation from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Germany's authority in charge of vaccines.
“Following a recommendation from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, the government is, out of caution, halting the administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine,” the ministry said in a statement.
German health minister Jens Spahn will give further details on the development at a news conference this afternoon.
European vaccination programmes have been upset in the last two weeks by reports that recipients of the AstraZeneca inoculation have suffered blood clots.
Last week, Lothar Wieler, head of Germany's Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, said there was no evidence that patients who received the vaccine were more likely than patients of a similar age group to suffer blood conditions.
Ireland suspended its use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Sunday morning.
Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Iceland have also halted use of the vaccine over blood clotting concerns. Italy's northern region of Piedmont on Sunday said it would stop using a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines after a teacher died following his vaccination on Saturday, while Austria also stopped using a particular batch last week.
The European Medicines Agency has said there is no indication that the events were caused by the vaccination, a view that was echoed by the World Health Organisation on Friday.
Many millions of people in Britain have so far received the British-Swedish pharma company's vaccine.
AstraZeneca said on Sunday a review of safety data of people vaccinated with its Covid-19 vaccine had shown no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
