UPDATE 2-Finland joins Sweden and Denmark to limit Modern COVID-19 vaccine
(Adds comment from Italy’s Minister of Health, background)
By Essi Lehto
HELSINKI, October 7 (Reuters) – Finland on Thursday suspended the use of the Mother’s COVID -19 vaccine for younger men due to reports of a rare cardiovascular side effect, which was agreed in Sweden and Denmark to limit its use.
Mika Salminen, head of the Finnish Health Institute, said that Finland would instead give Pfizer’s vaccine to men born in 1991 and later. Finland offers shots to people over 12 years of age.
“A Nordic study with Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark found that men under the age of 30 who received Moderna Spikevax had a slightly higher risk than others of developing myocarditis,” he said.
Swedish and Danish health officials had announced on Wednesday that they would pause the use of the Moderna vaccine for all young adults and children, with reference to the same unpublished study.
Norwegian health officials reiterated on Wednesday that they recommended men under the age of 30 choose Pfizer’s vaccine.
The Finnish institute said that the Nordic study would be published within a couple of weeks and preliminary data had been sent to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for further assessment.
The EMA’s safety committee concluded in July that such inflammatory heart disease can occur in very rare cases after vaccination with Spikevax or Pfizer / BioNTech Comirnaty -jab, more often in younger men after the second dose.
However, regulators in the US, the EU and the World Health Organization have emphasized that the benefits of shots based on the mRNA technology used by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to prevent COVID-19 continue to outweigh the risks.
A spokesperson for Moderna said late on Wednesday that they were aware of the Swedish and Danish supervisory authorities’ decisions.
“These are usually mild cases and individuals tend to recover shortly after standard treatment and rest. The risk of myocarditis increases significantly for those affected by COVID-19, and vaccination is the best way to protect against this.”
Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza told reporters that Italy did not plan to discontinue the Modern vaccine, saying European countries should work closer to better coordination.
“We have to rely on international authorities, starting with the EMA, which is our reference agency and has expressed very clear assessments on the issue,” he said. (Reporting by Essi Lehto in Helsinki and Emilio Parodi in Milan; Editing by Alex Richardson and Alison Williams)