Austrian authorities have suspended a batch of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine as a “precautionary measure” while they investigate a person’s death and another’s illness after taking the jab.
“The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) has received two reports in a temporal connection with a vaccination from the same batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the district clinic of Zwettl” in Lower Austria province, BASG said in a statement.
The reports center on a 49-year-old woman who BASG said “died as a result of severe coagulation disorders” and a 35-year-old woman “who developed a pulmonary embolism is on the way to recovery.”
The health authority said there is currently “no evidence of a causal relationship with the vaccination,” but that remaining stocks of the batch will no longer be “distributed and vaccinated.”
EU regulators approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab at the end of January, declaring it safe and effective enough to use in adults over the age of 18. The World Health Organization (WHO) gave its approval in mid-February.
An AstraZeneca spokesman told Reuters: “There have been no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine.â€
