World Health Organization safety experts are preparing to meet over the AstraZeneca/Oxford coronavirus vaccine, whose rollout has been halted in several European countries over blood clot fears.

The three largest EU nations – Germany, Italy and France – joined others in suspending the shot Monday, dealing a blow to the global immunisation campaign against a disease that has killed more than 2.6 million people. Sweden paused its use of the vaccine on Tuesday.

The World Health Organization, AstraZeneca, and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have insisted the shot is safe, and that there is no link between the vaccine and reported blood clots.

“We do not want people to panic and we would, for the time being, recommend that countries continue vaccinating with AstraZeneca,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said Monday.

“So far, we do not find an association between these events and the vaccine.”

The EMA said in a statement that “many thousands of people develop blood clots annually in the EU for different reasons” and that the number of incidents in vaccinated people “seems not to be higher than that seen in the general population”.

In a statement, the EMA “the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19, with its associated risk of hospitalisation and death, outweigh the risks of side effects.”

WHO and EMA experts on Tuesday will separately discuss data from AstraZeneca vaccinations, and the European regulator will hold an extraordinary meeting on Thursday to decide on any further action.

The German government, which had planned to hold a virtual summit on Wednesday to discuss the country’s vaccination efforts, has postponed the summit until after the EMA meeting.

Experts have said that the numbers of blood clots and thrombocytopenia cases – a rarer condition in which people do not make enough platelets – in people who have been vaccinated is no higher than in the population that has not received the jab.

The International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, representing medical experts around the world, said on Friday that “the small number of reported thrombotic events relative to the millions of administered Covid-19 vaccinations does not suggest a direct link”.

AstraZeneca’s shot, among the cheapest available, was billed as the vaccine of choice for poorer nations and the clot reports have had an impact beyond Europe.