AstraZeneca provides EU vaccine efficacy for the elderly at a glance

Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca is waging battles on multiple fronts this week – defending its coronavirus vaccine against reports that it may be less effective in protecting the elderly and in dealing with mounting tensions with the EU in due to his delayed supplies to the OR.

On Monday, the drugmaker defended its vaccine against reports in several German newspapers, Bild and Handelsblatt, that the AstraZeneca vaccine, created in collaboration with the University of Oxford, had a low rate of effectiveness (less than 10% and 8%, the newspapers said, respectively) among those over 65, the main target group for having the vaccine as they are at higher risk of serious illness and death.

The two cited anonymous German government officials who said the vaccine had a low rate of effectiveness in people over the age of 65 and that this could affect whether the vaccine was allowed to be used in those over 65. the elderly.

AstraZeneca responded on Monday evening, saying in a statement to CNBC: “Reports that the efficacy of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine is as low as 8% in adults over 65 are completely incorrect.”

“In November, we published data in The Lancet showing that older adults showed strong immune responses to the vaccine, with 100% of older adults generating specific antibodies to peaks after the second dose,” he said. he adds.

He said the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, which advises the government on its vaccination strategy, had supported the use of the vaccine in older people.

Elderly trial participants were later admitted to phase three clinical trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which took place in the UK and Brazil, and earlier in South Africa, so there is less data available. on the efficacy of the vaccine in people over 65 years of age. . The first trials in the UK focused on those under 55 to examine whether the vaccine was effective for the majority of healthcare workers.

When AstraZeneca published the results of his trial in the medical journal The Lancet in December, he said: “As the older age groups were recruited later than the younger age groups, there were fewer long for cases to accumulate and, therefore, efficacy data in these cohorts are currently limited by the small number of cases, but additional data will be available in future analyzes. ”CNBC has contacted AstraZeneca to obtain comments following reports.

On Tuesday morning, Germany’s health ministry said there was no data to suggest efficacy of just 8% in the elderly for AstraZeneca’s vaccine, Reuters reported.

Tensions have been mounting since last week, when the drugmaker announced that production issues would mean it would deliver far fewer doses to the EU than previously promised. The vast majority of AstraZeneca vaccine for distribution in the EU is made in the UK

The EU was supposed to receive 80 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine by March, according to an anonymous senior official who spoke to Reuters last Friday, but the drug maker had informed the EU that the dose offer would be reduced to some 31 million doses, a reduction of about 60%.

“This new schedule is not acceptable to the European Union,” European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in a statement on Monday, signaling that the EU may tighten rules on Covid-19 vaccine exports .

“The European Union will take all necessary measures to protect its citizens and its rights,” she noted, after saying earlier that “in the future, all companies producing vaccines against Covid-19 in the ‘EU will have to provide early notification whenever they wish to export vaccines to third countries. “

Any restriction on EU vaccine exports could affect injection supplies of Pfizer / BioNTech, which is manufactured in Belgium, UK.

Commissioner Kyriakides said on Monday that discussions with AstraZeneca representatives had “resulted in dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity and insufficient explanation”.

She added that “EU member states are united: vaccine developers have societal and contractual responsibilities that they must respect.” The EU has asked AstraZeneca to provide it with a detailed plan for vaccine deliveries and when they will be distributed, with further discussions scheduled for Wednesday.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine has yet to be approved for use by the European Medicines Agency, but Kyriakdes said it could happen by the end of the week.

The concern over AstraZeneca’s supplies comes on top of that of Pfizer and BioNTech who also warned in mid-January of temporarily reduced production as they improved their production capacity.

Supply shortages are a blow to the EU, whose vaccination campaign has already started (December 27) later than in the UK and US.

The EU has bought vaccines en bloc (although some countries have also made their own unilateral agreements) with vaccines that should be distributed based on population size, but vaccination deployments in each country, including in Germany, have been very slow so far.