Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani breaks down the EU drug agency update on the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Video Transcript

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AKIKO FUJITA: Welcome back to "Yahoo Finance Live." We've got an update out of Europe on some of the concerns around that AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Anjalee Khemlani here with that story. Anjalee, we heard from EU's drug regulator a short time ago that seemed to sort of ease concerns that the vaccine's related directly to the blood clots we've seen in some of these patients.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: That's correct. So we have the executive director of the European Medicines Agency saying specifically, quote, "that the vaccine is safe and effective and is not associated with increased risk of blood clots" but then went on to say that in the review of clinical data, autopsies, and clinical trial data, they did notice a small occurrence of blood clots resulting in the idea that they, quote, "cannot rule out definitively the risk of blood clots" and will continue to raise awareness and possibly add information to the product guide on this occurrence.

And so that's sort of where things stand. So it is saying that it's safe to continue moving on an using. But probably will have to look into specifically which groups it might affect more than others with this blood clot.

AKIKO FUJITA: And Anjalee, we're talking about this vaccine because there are more than a dozen countries globally that have halted the vaccine rollout specifically with AstraZeneca out of concerns about safety. What does this latest update from the EU regulator mean on that front?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: It means that these countries can restart and can continue to use the AstraZeneca vaccine. We'll see based on the results of the press briefing that's going on right now what these countries do decide. There are already concerns from earlier on, actually, when you talk about whether it is the concern of using the vaccine in the elderly or just generally how the vaccine performed when it comes to the various strains.

We know, for example, South Africa basically quit using AstraZeneca's vaccine after it performed poorly against the South African variant. So there are still a lot of hurdles for this company to overcome. But as of right now, it looks like the regulatory body at least is greenlighting its use.

AKIKO FUJITA: OK, Anjalee Khemlani bringing us that update on AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine. Thanks so much for that.