Two people in Japan reportedly died after taking doses of the Moderna vaccine from a suspended batch, media reports said.
The victims were men in their 30s, each of whom received their second Moderna doses from one of three manufacturing lots that were suspended on Thursday, RT quoted the country's health ministry as saying on Saturday.
Authorities had suspended a batch as a precautionary measure after some of the vials were found contaminated.
Tokyo halted the country's rollout of more than 1.63 million doses as Japan's domestic distributor Takeda alerted the government about the foreign material discovered in 39 unused vials. All contaminated doses were manufactured at a Madrid factory run by a Spanish firm Rovi, which said that the vials in question belonged to a batch exclusively shipped to Japan, RT reported.
The foreign substance's composition was not immediately clear. But local media reports said that some doses were contaminated with metal particles.
Japan's minister in charge of the immunization campaign Taro Kono on Friday said that over five lacs inoculations were already made using the doses from the lots in question. "It doesn't appear like there are any serious safety issues at this point," RT quoted Kono as saying.
Meanwhile, Moderna launched an inquiry into the matter and the European Union also launched its probe to find if the European supplies were impacted or not, RT said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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