UPDATE 1-Germany to resume vaccination with AstraZeneca on Friday
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BERLIN, March 18 (Reuters) - Germany will resume administering AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine on Friday morning, Health Minister Jens Spahn said, after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) stated earlier that its health benefits outweighed any risks it posed.
Spahn told a Thursday evening news conference that suspending the vaccine had been the right call given the importance of being transparent about the safety of medicines being distributed by the state.
The information slip that came with the vaccine would be updated with more details about the risk it posed under certain circumstances of triggering a rare type of thrombosis.
"The EMA's analysis confirms our own view: it was right to halt AstraZeneca vaccination out of caution until the clustering of this very rare type of thrombosis had been examined," Spahn said.
"It would have been difficult to take responsibility for allowing doctors to continue vaccinations without this information," he added. (Reporting by Thomas Escritt, Douglas Busvine, editing by Kirsti Knolle)
