Norwegian health authorities concluded that the string of deaths among the elderly is not directly linked to the COVID-19 vaccines they received.
“Clearly, COVID-19 is far more dangerous to most patients than vaccination,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency told Bloomberg on Monday. “We are not alarmed.”
Reports of 33 fatalities among adults 75 and older after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine raised fears that immunization is too risky. Norwegian health authorities pointed out that those who died had serious underlying health conditions. Madsen said that it’s possible the side effects of immunizations could “tip the patients into a more serious course of the underlying disease.”
“We can’t say that people die from the vaccine,” Madsen said. “We can say that it may be coincidental. It is difficult to prove that it’s the vaccine which is the direct cause.”
Roughly 42,000 Norwegians have received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, which, until Friday, was the only vaccine available. The government approved the Moderna vaccine for public use later that day.
The country concentrated first on inoculating as many seniors and residents in nursing homes as possible in a phased approach similar to that of the United States. Madsen said that Norway has immunized all of its nursing home residents “more or less,” and the fatalities reported were “well under 1 out of 1,000.”
The country’s health agency is working with Pfizer to assess the causes of death among the elderly. The first Europe-wide safety report on the vaccine is due out later this month.
