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Tag: Denmark

  • Denmark reports two cases of serious illness, one death after AstraZeneca shot

    Denmark reports two cases of serious illness, one death after AstraZeneca shot

    Denmark said on Saturday 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 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 the use of the vaccine after reports of cases of rare brain blood clots sent scientists and governments scrambling to determine any link.

    Some countries, including Germany and France, this week reversed their decision to suspend the use of the vaccine following an investigation into the reports of blood clots by the European Union’s drug watchdog.

    EU said, on Thursday, it is still convinced the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.

    Denmark – along with Sweden and Norway – said on Friday it needed more time to decide whether to use the vaccine.

    “We prioritise reports of suspected serious side effects such as these and examine them thoroughly to assess whether there is a possible link to the vaccine,’’ Tanja Erichsen, acting Director of Pharmacovigilance at the Danish Medicines Agency, said in a tweet on Saturday.

    “We are in the process of dealing with the two specific cases.’’

    European Medicines Agency (EMA) Director, Emer Cooke said on Thursday the watchdog could not definitively rule out a link between blood clot incidents and the vaccine in its investigation into 30 cases of a rare blood clotting condition.

    But she said the “clear” conclusion of the review was that the benefits in protecting people from the risk of death or hospitalisation outweigh the possible risks.

    The issue deserves further analysis, the EMA said.

    AstraZeneca, which developed the shot with Oxford University, said that a review, covering more than 17 million people who had received its shots in the EU and Britain, had found no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.

    The company on Saturday declined to comment on the new cases in Denmark but referred to a statement published on Thursday, in which its Chief Medical Officer, Ann Taylor, said: “Vaccine safety is paramount and we welcome the regulators’ decisions which affirm the overwhelming benefit of our vaccine in stopping the pandemic.

    “We trust that, after the regulators’ careful decisions, vaccinations can once again resume across Europe’’.

  • Rangers and Denmark great Laudrup wins cancer battle

    Rangers and Denmark great Laudrup wins cancer battle

    Former Rangers and Denmark forward Brian Laudrup said he has been given the all-clear from cancer after a 10-year battle.

    The 51-year-old was a decade ago diagnosed with Follicular Lymphoma, a slow-growing form of blood cancer.

    “Today, after 10 years of treatment and check-ups, I finally got the all-clear for my Follicular Lymphoma cancer diagnosis,” Laudrup said on Instagram.

    “A huge `thank you’ to this amazing and wonderful medical staff at Rigshospitalet.”

    Laudrup made 116 appearances for Rangers between 1994 and 1998 and helped them to three successive Scottish league titles, two FA Cups and a League Cup.

    He also had spells at Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Ajax.

    Capped 82 times by Denmark, he was part of the side that defied the odds to win Euro 1992.

  • World Cup: Denmark complain to police after Jorgensen death threats

    World Cup: Denmark complain to police after Jorgensen death threats

    The Danish Football Association has filed a police complaint after death threats were sent to striker Nicolai Jorgensen after their exit from the World Cup.

    Denmark were knocked out of the tournament when they lost to Croatia on penalties in the second round.

    After seeing Christian Eriksen and Lasse Schone’s attempts from the spot saved, Jorgensen missed his side’s fifth and final penalty, allowing Ivan Rakitic to convert for Croatia and send them through.

    The failure in Russia has been a hard one for supporters to take and many have attacked Jorgensen on social media with death threats and homophobic slurs.

    And the Danish FA has called for the abuse to stop and will follow the issue up with the authorities.

    “STOP. Our society must never accept death threats – not against World Cup stars, politicians or anyone else,” the governing body tweeted.

    “That is totally unacceptable and indecent. We are reporting the matter to the police to put an end to this madness.”

    Jorgensen, who has scored 38 goals in 76 games for Feyenoord, featured in the first two matches of the World Cup as Denmark beat Peru and drew with Australia, but was rested for the clash with France before coming off the bench in the second-half against Croatia.

    Goal

  • Danish inventor gets life sentence for journalist submarine murder

    A Copenhagen court on Wednesday found Danish inventor Peter Madsen guilty of the premeditated murder and sexual assault of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his homemade submarine last year, handing him a life sentence.

    Madsen, 47, had admitted chopping up the 30-year-old’s body and throwing her remains overboard in waters off Copenhagen on the night of August 10, 2017, but claimed her death was accidental.

    “He committed a cynical, planned murder, of a particularly brutal nature,” the judge said as she read out the verdict, adding that Madsen “dismembered the body in order to hide the evidence of murder.”

    A life sentence in Denmark averages around 16 years.

    Wearing a black T-shirt and blazer, Madsen stood in the courtroom to hear the ruling. As it was read out, he sat down next to his lawyer, visibly affected and dejected.

    Madsen’s lawyer said he would appeal.

    Wall, a freelance reporter, had set off with the eccentric, self-titled “inventrepreneur” on his vessel on the evening of August 10 to interview him for a story.

    Reported missing by her boyfriend, Wall’s remains were retrieved from waters off Copenhagen in the weeks following her death.

    During the trial, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen argued that Madsen killed Wall as part of a macabre sexual fantasy, showing the court videos found on Madsen’s computer of women being tortured, beheaded, impaled, and hanged.

    “He tried to create the perfect crime,” Buch-Jepsen told the court.

    – Madsen ‘untrustworthy’ –

    Madsen confessed to stuffing the journalist’s head, arms and legs into plastic bags, weighing them down with metal pipes before tossing them into the sea.

    But after changing his version of events several times, he testified that she died when the air pressure suddenly dropped and toxic fumes filled his vessel as he was up on deck.

    Despite the testimony of many experts, the lack of tangible evidence in the case and the decomposed state of Wall’s remains made it impossible to determine an exact cause of death.

    An autopsy report concluded she probably died as a result of suffocation or having her throat slit.

    Fourteen stab wounds and piercings were also found in and around her genital area.

    Madsen had argued that he stabbed her because he wanted to prevent gases from building up inside her body that would prevent it from sinking to the seabed.

    The court — made up of one professional judge and two lay judges — found the incriminating circumstances were enough to find Madsen guilty, citing the gruesome videos he watched, and the fact that he brought a saw, plastic strips and a sharpened screwdriver on board just before the voyage.

    The judge said the court found Madsen’s explanations “untrustworthy”, noting that he provided no reasonable explanation for why he brought the objects on board.

    The prosecution also presented as evidence the fact that on the night before Wall boarded his vessel, he googled “beheaded girl agony”, which Madsen tried to claim was “pure coincidence”.

    He also told the court his interest in the videos was “not of a sexual nature.”

    The court also did not believe his claim that he cut up her body hours after her death and disposed of it to spare her family the details of a painful death by fume inhalation.

    The court found that Wall’s remains showed “signs of trauma when she was still alive, and wounds from around the time of death or shortly after.”

    In his final words to the court on Monday after both sides wrapped up their final arguments, Madsen said: “I’m really, really sorry for what happened.”

    – ‘Loving psychopath’ –

    Psychiatric experts who evaluated Madsen — who described himself to friends as “a psychopath, but a loving one” — found him to be “a pathological liar” who poses “a danger to others” and who was likely to be a repeat offender.

    Madsen will be the 25th person to currently serve a life sentence in the Nordic nation, which has a reputation as tranquil and safe.

    He is a semi-celebrity in Denmark, known for his ambitious development of rockets and amateur space travel.

    Wall was an award-winning journalist who criss-crossed the globe in search for intrepid and unique news stories.

    Her death shocked Denmark, which fell from fourth place last year to ninth in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, which cited the incident in its report a few hours before the verdict.

    AFP