“We believe that such an alternative may appear unethical…”
While waiting for the final decision on the controversial vaccine, Norway has decided to distribute its stock of AstraZeneca to fellow Nordic countries that actually want to use them despite the associated risks.
Norwegians run a greater risk of dying from being inoculated with AstraZeneca’s vaccine than from COVID-19, the National Institute of Public Health (FHI) concluded in its analysis, recommending the vaccine, previously linked to serious complications in the form of rare blood clotting and haemorrhage amid low platelet counts.
Abstaining from the vaccine could possibly prevent up to 10 deaths related to side effects, the FHI said, according to the newspaper Verdens Gang.
So far, Norway has seen five cases of serious incidents reported shortly after vaccination, with three fatalities. FHI has calculated the mortality rate from the AstraZeneca vaccine as 2.3 people per 100,000 vaccinated.
The FHI stressed that continuing to inoculate will by contrast expose younger women to an “unreasonably high risk”, given the current relatively levels of infection in Norway.
Furthermore, the institute is against offering the vaccine on a voluntary basis, which has been proposed both in Norway and fellow Scandinavian nations.
“We believe that such an alternative may appear unethical and with a high risk that those who make such a choice have not fully understood the risk to which they are exposed,” the institute said.
The FHI also ventured that recommending the AstraZeneca vaccine for further use could lead to lower confidence among the population in vaccination programmes in general.
“This could lead to a lower vaccination rate and vaccination rate in the long run, and that patients in risk groups will also say no to vaccines.”
