AstraZeneca said on Sunday its Covid-19 vaccine contains no pork-derived ingredients, countering an assertion doing the rounds in Indonesia.
Indonesia’s highest Muslim clerical council, the Indonesia Ulema Council, said on its website Friday that the vaccine is “haram” because the manufacturing process uses “trypsin from the pork pancreas.”
AstraZeneca Indonesia spokesman Rizman Abudaeri said in a statement: “At all stages of the production process, this virus vector vaccine does not use nor come in contact with pork-derived products or other animal products.”
Indonesian authorities on Friday approved the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine after reviewing reports that it had caused blood clots among some recipients in Europe.
Indonesia is grappling with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Asia – with 1,455,788 cases and 39,447 deaths.
Earlier, on Saturday, Denmark reported that one person had died and another fell seriously ill with blood clots and cerebral haemorrhage after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination.
The two, both hospital staff members, had both received the AstraZeneca vaccine less than 14 days before getting ill, the authority that runs public hospitals in Copenhagen said.
The Danish Medicines Agency confirmed it had received two “serious reports”, without giving further details. There were no details of when the hospital staff got ill.
Denmark, which halted using the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 11, was among more than a dozen countries that temporarily paused use of the vaccine after reports of cases of rare brain blood clots sent scientists and governments scrambling to determine any link.
