Health Minister Janez Poklukar yesterday evening said that as a precaution Slovenia has temporarily suspended vaccination with AstraZeneca jabs.

He added the Slovenian expert group for vaccines had not found reasonable grounds to stop using the vaccine and said all those scheduled to receive the vaccine in the coming days will be rescheduled while vaccination with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines will continue as planned.

The decision comes after several European countries, including Germany, France and Italy, decided to halt the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after a number of cases of blood clots developing after the vaccine was administered. However, experts say the number of blood clots reported after the vaccine were no more than those typically reported within the general population.

The European Medicines Agency plans to decide on further actions over the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday.