AstraZeneca denies reporting vaccine to be less effective in older people

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – AstraZeneca on Monday denied that its COVID-19 vaccine was not very effective for people over 65, after German media said officials feared the vaccine might not be approved in the European Union for use in the elderly.

German dailies Handelsblatt and Bild said in separate reports that the vaccine – co-developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford – had an effectiveness of 8% or less than 10%, respectively, in those over 65.

German officials were concerned that the vaccine would receive approval from EU pharmaceutical authority EMA for use in people over 65, Bild said in his online edition.

The reports mark another potential problem for AstraZeneca, which told the EU on Friday it could not meet agreed supply targets until the end of March after encountering problems with vaccine production.

Frustration was already growing in European countries as Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced a temporary slowdown in vaccine supplies in early January.

In a written response, AstraZeneca described German media reports saying its COVID-19 vaccine was found to have very low efficacy in the elderly as “completely incorrect”.

He said the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization supported the use of the vaccine in the elderly. He also said that a strong immune response to the vaccine had been shown in the blood tests of elderly participants in the trials.

On December 30, Britain became the first country to approve the two-dose vaccine and did not impose an upper age limit. He has so far focused on the elderly and health workers for his vaccination campaign.

AstraZeneca’s main trial in Britain began testing adults under the age of 55, as it initially focused on healthcare workers and frontline workers on active duty.

Elderly trial participants were recruited later so that infections, which are necessary for reliable efficacy data, also arrive later.

Researchers at the University of Oxford said in an article published in the medical journal The Lancet on December 8, when details of major vaccine trials in Britain and Brazil were released, that data from Efficacy-based infections in the elderly were still limited.

“Efficacy data in these cohorts is currently limited by the small number of (infection) cases, but more data will be available in future analyzes,” they said in the article.