Sydney, Jan 18 Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the country is seeking urgent information on the deaths of 29 elderly Norwegian patients following their immunization with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine against Covid-19.
Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration will seek "additional information, both from the company, but also from the Norwegian medical regulator," Hunt said on Sunday.
Australia has an agreement for 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
According to a report in Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), the Norwegian Medicines Agency (NOMA) said they could not rule out the possibility that vaccination side effects including fever and nausea had contributed to the deaths, but noted the country was vaccinating elderly people with serious underlying diseases.
"Therefore it is expected that deaths close to the time of vaccination may occur," the agency said in a statement.
Norway has expressed increasing concern about the safety of the Pfizer vaccine on elderly people with serious underlying health conditions.
The Federal Government is taking extreme caution with the Pfizer vaccine after the death of 29 elderly patients in Norway.
Pfizer said the company was monitoring and reviewing all reports of severe allergic reactions to the vaccine.
"Overall, there were no safety signals of concern identified in our clinical trials, including no signal of serious allergic reactions associated with the vaccine," the company said in a statement.
Doctors in Norway have been asked to conduct more thorough evaluations of very frail elderly patients in line to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, following the reported deaths, the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) reported.
( With inputs from IANS )
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