Amid concerns over possible side-effects, Greece stands by Oxford vaccine

With a spate of EU countries having suspended administration of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine due to inconclusive indications of a possible connection of the vaccine to thrombosis in a minuscule percentage of those who received the vaccine, Greece has said it will continue to use it in its ongoing rollout.

Use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Greece will continue «steadily and with confidence», the head of the Greek National Vaccination Committee, Maria Theodoridou, told a televised news conference today.

Theodoridou along with members of the National Committee on COVID-19 have been stressing over recent days that the evidence of a correlation between inoculation with the AstraZeneca vaccine and thrombosis is minimal and inconclusive.

She said the National Vaccination Committee had formally recommended earlier the continuation of the vaccination rollout with use of the AstraZeneca vaccine as scheduled.

A European Medicines Agency (EMA) report is expected to issued on 18 March on isolated thrombosis and embolism incidents that have led several EU and other countries to temporarily suspend use of the company's vaccine.

The Greek health ministry's secretary general for primary health care, Marios Themistokleous, a neurologist who is in charge of the vaccination rollout, said that overall fewer than four percent of scheduled appointments for inoculations using the AstraZeneca vaccine have been cancelled.

However, Themistokleous presented data indicating that the percentage rose sharply to about 15 percent of scheduled appointments today, and he attributed that to recently mounting public concerns about the safety of this particular vaccine.

Themistokleous said at the news conference that Greece is currently expecting...