Romanian authorities have temporarily stopped vaccinating people with one batch of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine as an „extreme precaution” but are continuing to use other doses from the company, a health agency said on Thursday, according to Reuters.
Italian health authorities have ordered the withdrawal of a batch of AstraZeneca’s vaccine following the deaths of two men in Sicily who were recently inoculated.
Romania said it has suspended using doses from the same batch in question to what has happened in Italy, adding it received 81,600 doses in early February and has used 77,049 so far. The suspension will last until the European Medicines Agency concludes its investigation.
“From the information we have so far, the batch in which those few problems appeared was not distributed in Romania, so we do not have this batch in Romania. We will see what decision we will take, but the vaccination campaign goes on. We have already announced today (Thursday) that we will receive an additional 170,000 Pfizer doses in March, and as you know, we agreed in January to supplement the Pfizer doses by 8 million, which will start in April. So there is no problem for Romania to continue at the same pace as before the vaccination campaign”, said Citu to B1 TV.