After the death of a young 20-year-old woman, Slovenia suspended as a precaution this Wednesday the use of the Janssen vaccine against the coronavirus produced by the American pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.
“We are temporarily stopping until all the details related to this case are clarified,” Health Minister Janez Poklukar told reporters in Ljubljana. According to Bojana Beovic, who heads the expert group advising the government, “there could be an unwanted link between death and vaccination.”
A low vaccination rate
Slovenian media earlier reported on the case of a 20-year-old woman hospitalized in serious condition on Monday, just days after receiving a dose of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine. She succumbed to a brain hemorrhage and blood clots overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday.
A death has already been linked in the past to this vaccine in Slovenia where compulsory vaccination goes into effect in the public service on Friday 1 October, pushing an increasing number of people to be vaccinated. With 47% of the population vaccinated, this country of two million inhabitants has a protection rate below the average in the European Union (64%). Four vaccines are currently authorized in the EU by the European Medicines Agency (EMA): Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
