"It's fine:" Doncaster's Jeremy Clarkson backs AstraZeneca jab as EU countries suspend jabs

Taking to Twitter, The Grand Tour and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? host told his followers: “I had the Astra Zeneca vaccine yesterday and my blood is still a liquid. So it’s fine.”

It comes as vaccine safety experts from the World Health Organization meet to review the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab, after several European countries halted their rollouts.

There have been a number of cases in Europe of blood clots reported after the vaccine was administered.

But the numbers are below the level you would expect in the general population.

The UK medicines regulator and the WHO say there is no evidence of a link.

About 17 million people in the EU and the UK have received a dose of the vaccine, with fewer than 40 cases of blood clots reported as of last week, AstraZeneca said.

Concerns that there could be a link led to 11 European countries temporarily suspending use of the vaccine, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

However, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine said they would continue to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine.

In January, Burghwallis-born Clarkson revealed he had contracted coronavirus over Christmas.

The former Top Gear host wrote in his Sunday Times column: "Four days before Christmas, I woke in the night to find my sheets were soggy. And that I had a constant dry cough.”

After his test came back positive, he said: "The doctor was very clear - I'd feel under the weather for between five and 14 days and then I'd either get better or I'd have to go to hospital.

"Because I am 60 and fat, and because I've smoked half a million cigarettes and had double pneumonia, I'd probably die, on my own, in a lonely plastic tent."

Clarkson added: "I'm not going to lie - it was quite scary.

"With every illness I've had, there has always been a sense that medicine and time would eventually ride to the rescue.

"But with COVID-19 you have to lie there, on your own, knowing that medicine is not on its way and that time is your worst enemy."