'No indication' AstraZeneca Covid vaccine causes death, EU drug regulator says after Austria pauses rollout over safety fears

There is no evidence so far to link the death and illness of two people in Austria to their vaccination with AstraZeneca's Covid-19 jab, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has said after a preliminary review of the batch used.

Austria's public health agency announced on Sunday that it was suspending its rollout of a batch of the jabs after a 49-year-old woman died from multiple thrombosis 10 days after being given the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Another woman, aged 35, who received the vaccine was hospitalized with pulmonary embolism, while a further two cases of blood clotting in patients given jabs from the same batch have been reported since Tuesday, the EMA said.

"There is currently no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions, which are not listed as side effects with this vaccine," the regulator said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Austrian authorities this week launched an investigation into 'Batch ABV5300' of 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, some of which were also sent to 16 other EU countries.

The EMA said a "quality defect is considered unlikely at this stage," but said that its own Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee would also review reported instances of blood-clotting post-vaccination.

Blood-clotting or "thromboembolic events" in people given the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca with Oxford University are no more common than in the general population, the EMA noted.

Of the 3 million EU citizens to receive the vaccine since the EMA approved it in January, 22 cases of thromboembolic events have been reported, as of March 9, according to the EU regulator.

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