Norway Moves to Calm Vaccine Anxiety After Elderly Deaths
Bloomberg 1/18/2021 Lars Erik Taraldsen and Naomi Kresge
(Bloomberg) Health authorities in Norway sought to allay safety concerns raised by the death of some elderly patients after they were vaccinated against Covid-19, saying there’s no evidence of a direct link.
The initial reports from Norway raised alarm as the world looks for early signs of potential side effects from the vaccines. Although doctors say it’s possible that vaccine side-effects could aggravate underlying illnesses, they were expecting nursing-home residents to die shortly after being vaccinated because deaths are more common among the frailest and sickest elderly patients.
Doctors in Norway are investigating the deaths of 23 elderly patients who had received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, looking into the possibility that adverse reactions to the vaccine "may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients."
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Norway has found no direct link between the Pfizer Covid vaccine and the deaths of 33 elderly peopleCredit: AFP - Getty Medical director Dr Steinar Madsen said today: Clearly, Covid-19 is more dangerous to most patients than vaccination. We are not alarmed. All of these patients had serious underlying illnesses. We can t say that people die from the vaccine. We can say that it may be coincidental. It is difficult to prove that it s the vaccine which is the direct cause.
He said administering the vaccine could tip the [already sick] patients into a more serious course of the underlying disease , saying we can t rule that out .