Germany has rejected media reports doubting the efficacy of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine
The Federal Ministry of Health, Germany has rubbished the media reports which casted doubts over the effectiveness of AstraZenaca’s Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine in elderly.
AstraZeneca plc, the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company with its headquarters in Cambridge, England, has also described the reports as incorrect. It’s COVID-19 vaccine has been developed in collaboration with Oxford University.
A leading financial daily – Handelsblatt and a tabloid – Bild, reported that the German Government was working on the basis of only 8% efficacy among those over 65, compared with over 90% for the other vaccines.
Speaking on the occasion, an AstraZeneca Spokesperson said, “Reports that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine efficacy is as low as 8% in adults over 65 years are completely incorrect.”
Supporting AstraZeneca, The Federal Ministry of Health, Germany said, “Around 8% of the volunteers in AstraZeneca’s efficacy studies were around 56 and 69 years old and 3-4% are above 70 years old.”
This comes at a time when there are rising concerns in the European Union (E.U.) over delay in supply of the vaccine. The E.U. has also said that it may restrict the exports of vaccines made in the bloc in response to AstraZeneca saying it cannot supply the agreed numbers of doses due to production problems.
It is to be noted that European Medicines Agency (EMA), E.U.’s agency in charge of the evaluation and supervision of medicinal products, has so far only approved Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine for roll-out across Europe. It is yet to approve AstraZeneca’s vaccine.
Though the AstraZeneca jab is expected to be approved by EMA soon, Bild reported that Garman Government may not approve it for use in elderly.
The Members of European Parliament (MEP) have asked the Executive Director of EMA – Emer Cooke about the efficacy of the vaccine in older people. In her response, she said studies carried out so far were on a very small quantity of the elderly population.
The EMA is trying to work out what the data means for the populations that were studied and what can be expected for populations that have not been studied. She also didn’t rule out the possibility of approving the vaccine only for a particular age group.
Earlier in November 2020, AstraZeneca had published data in the leading medical journal – The Lancet, which stated that older adults showed strong immune responses to the vaccine. All the adults generated spike-specific antibodies after the second dose.
Full trial data in December 2020 showed the vaccine was 70% effective in all adults and it was approved for use by the United Kingdom (U.K.).
