Geneva: The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged countries not to pause Covid vaccinations, as several major EU member states halted their rollouts of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab.
The fresh suspensions were a major blow to a global immunisation campaign that experts hope will help end a pandemic that has already killed over 2.6 million people and decimated the global economy.
The three largest EU countries — Germany, Italy and France — all paused rollouts on Monday and were later joined by Spain, Portugal, Slovenia and Latvia.
The WHO’s vaccine safety experts are meeting on Tuesday to discuss the jab.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) will meet on the same day and is due to draw conclusions on Thursday. It has also said the vaccine should continue to be used.
There have been a number of cases in Europe of blood clots developing after the vaccine was administered.
However, experts say these were no more than the number of blood-clot incidents typically reported within the general population.
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