Denmark, Sweden and Norway said on Friday they needed more time to decide whether to use AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine while Finland joined them in putting the shots on hold, even though the EU drug watchdog said the benefits outweighed any risks. “We need time to get to the bottom of this,” Soren Brostrom, head of the Danish Health Authority, told reporters on Friday. Several European countries last week suspended use of the vaccine following reports of rare instances of blood clots in some people who had been vaccinated. On Friday nearly a dozen of them resumed inoculations on the EMA’s recommendation. “This does not change the fact that, on the basis of a precautionary principle, we are continuing our suspension, because we need to understand this better, so that we can say with certainty that we recommend this vaccine,” Brostrom said. Finland, which had not previously suspended the vaccine, announced it would halt the use of the AstraZeneca shot while investigating two suspected cases of blood clots. “After doing the investigation we can better inform people about the risk associated with the vaccine if there is one,” said Taneli Puumalainen, chief physician at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.