Germany, France and other European nations announced plans to resume using AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday after EU and British regulators moved to shore up confidence in the shot, saying its benefits outweigh the risks.

Reports of rare brain blood clots had prompted more than a dozen nations to suspend use of the shot, the latest challenge for AstraZeneca's ambition to produce a "vaccine for the world", as the global death toll from the coronavirus passes 2.8 million.

The European Medicines Agency's (EMA) "clear" conclusion following an investigation into 30 cases of unusual blood disorders was that the vaccine's benefits in protecting people from coronavirus-related death or hospitalisation outweighs the possible risks, though it said a link between blood clots in the brain and the shot could not be definitively ruled out.