The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has said the AstraZeneca coronavirus jab is a "safe and effective vaccine".
The regulator's executive director Emer Cooke said the Covid-19 vaccine was safe despite a host of European countries, including Germany and Spain, suspending its use following reports of blood clots.
The EMA said the benefits of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine "outweigh the possible risks". Ms Cooke told a press briefing: "The committee has come to a clear scientific conclusion.
"This is a safe and effective vaccine. Its benefits in protecting people from Covid-19, with the associated risks of death and hospitalisation, outweigh the possible risks.
"The committee also concluded that the vaccine is not associated with an increase in the overall risk of thromboembolic events, or blood clots."
The UK has received five reports of a specific brain blood clot in people who have had the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine though no causal link has been made with the jab, the medicines regulator said on Thursday.
The five people were men aged 19 to 59 who experienced a clot together with low blood platelet count. One of the five has since died. There is no detail as yet on whether they had underlying health conditions.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it was looking at the reports but stressed the events were “extremely rare” and there was a possibility they could have been caused by Covid itself.
It said the cases represented a less than one in a million chance of suffering this type of clot among those who have been vaccinated while the risk of dying from Covid aged 40 to 49 was one in 1,000.
The MHRA has concluded that any link between the jab and clots is unproven and the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh any risks.
The type of clot – cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) – prevents blood from draining out of the brain.
It is this type of clot that led Germany to halt its rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine prompting other countries across Europe to follow.
