The minister told the LRT Radio on Thursday that he expected positive decisions from the European Medicines Agency on this vaccine “within a matter of days or hours”. He admitted, however, that the suspension of AstraZeneca’s vaccine by many European countries, including Lithuania, dealt a “heavy blow to its reputation”.
“Given that our vaccination strategy and logistics were based solely on vaccination of priority groups, we will now probably reconsider the use of this vaccine and perhaps amend those decisions and perhaps simply offer its shots to all willing persons. However, final decisions have not yet been made,” Dulkys said when asked how he planned to restore trust in this vaccine.
According to the minister, numerous reports about the suspension of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in Europe suggested that its reputation “has already been ruined and we would have had to address that issue in one way or another”.
“I just want to say repeatedly. When such countries as France, Germany, Spain, Italy suspend [vaccination], I cannot imagine what authority should an expert have in Lithuania to be able to convince that hesitant person to receive an AstraZeneca jab,” he said.
“I think there were no good decisions to make. The only options available were a bad decision and a worse decision,” Dulkys added.
On Tuesday night, Lithuania followed the suit of some other European Union’s (EU) countries and suspended vaccination with AstraZeneca’s vaccine temporarily, even though both Dulkys and Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte earlier said that there were no plans to take such action.
Vaccination has been put on hold until the final conclusions of the European Medicines Agency on the safety of this vaccine are available. The agency will hold a special meeting on the vaccine on Thursday.
The decision to suspend vaccination was based on a recommendation from the State Medicines Control Agency, which received three reports about incidents of thromboembolism after vaccination. However, the Service pointed out that it had no proofs whether those events were triggered by the vaccine.