Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion/World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO/WHO) Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Dr Er­i­ca Wheel­er, is ad­vis­ing that it is yet too soon to jump to con­clu­sions about re­ports of 23 deaths in Nor­way al­leged­ly be­cause of the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech COVID-19 vac­cine. 

That vac­cine was among the first ap­proved for use to com­bat the coro­n­avirus and ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty the Pfiz­er vac­cine could be the one used in this coun­try.

But the PA­HO/WHO rep­re­sen­ta­tive said there is no con­crete ev­i­dence to link the vac­cine to the deaths in Nor­way.

“We do not yet know if those deaths are in fact di­rect­ly at­trib­ut­able to vac­cines be­cause the Nor­weigan pop­u­la­tion... be­tween two and three per cent are el­der­ly and it is on­ly el­der­ly peo­ple so far that have re­ceived it,” Dr Wheel­er said while speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew.

“Out of those peo­ple who re­ceived the vac­cines, we do not yet have the da­ta that links the deaths (to the vac­cine). Every year peo­ple die. El­der­ly peo­ple over 80 die every year and we can­not jump to the con­clu­sion au­to­mat­i­cal­ly that it is be­cause of the vac­cine. There needs to be re­search. There’s hard­ly been any time that has passed (since the in­ci­dent).”

She said in in­ci­dents such as what oc­curred in Nor­way there is typ­i­cal­ly med­ical in­ves­ti­ga­tions. She as­sured that “that is go­ing on right now be­tween the WHO and the Nor­weigan gov­ern­ment.”

News broke over the week­end that 23 peo­ple died in Nor­way af­ter re­ceiv­ing the first dose of the Pfiz­er vac­cine- the ma­jor­i­ty of whom were el­der­ly nurs­ing home pa­tients. 

As of last Thurs­day, 42,000 peo­ple in Nor­way had re­ceived their first dose of the vac­cine. The el­der­ly and those with un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions were at the front of the line to re­ceive the jab.