AstraZeneca denies reports claiming low efficacy of vaccine on elderly people

Pharma giant
AstraZeneca pushed back against media reports claiming German government has doubts
on its COVID-19 vaccine being largely ineffective on elderly people above 65, reports AFP.

“Reports that
the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine efficacy is as low as eight percent in adults
over 65 years are completely incorrect,” the firm said in a statement late
Monday.

The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company also stated that it published a data in ‘The Lancet’ indicating strong immune response among older adults with 100% of older adults generating spike-specific antibodies after the second dose.

The pharma company’s statements came after ‘The Handelsblatt’ and ‘Bild’, both German economic daily citing unnamed sources, reported on Monday that Berlin estimated AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine efficacy to be just 8%  in adults over 65 years.

Bild’s report also claimed that the German government officials didn’t expect the vaccine to be
approved by the European Medicines Agency regulator for use on individuals
over 65 as a result of this claim.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn on the other hand told media that the country would wait to see the complete data from studies of the AstraZeneca vaccine before drawing any conclusions.

“On that basis,
decisions could be taken next week about “which age groups will be
inoculated first with this vaccine,” said Spahn.

Meanwhile, the European Union on Monday issued an intense warning to AstraZeneca over unexpected delay in delivering  COVID-19 vaccine to the bloc after the pharma giant on Friday said that it failed to meet its
contractual delivery commitments to the bloc owing to unexplained
“reduced yields” in its European supply chain.

However, the European Union this week was set to add AstraZeneca in the list of authorized COVID-19 vaccines, which includes BioNTech/Pfizer
and Moderna, on the
understanding that it would be available by the time for immediate
rollout.