AstraZeneca Vaccine: UK Dismisses Claim Covid Jab Is Unsafe For Over-65s
Germany’s vaccine committee has recommended AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine should not be given to people over 65 due to a lack of sufficient data.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University have dismissed the claims and Public Health England has stated the vaccine provides safe and high levels of protection.
The European Medicines Agency is expected to make a decision on whether to approve AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine on Friday.
So what do we know about the data?
What Germany says
The German health ministry said in a draft recommendation that only 6% of participants in the trials were over 65, with 341 having the AstraZeneca vaccine and 319 receiving a placebo.
One infection was recorded in each group, creating a high confidence interval that the German authorities describe in their report as “no longer statistically significant”.
The committee said: “Any assessment about the efficacy of the vaccination among the highest age group [75 and over] therefore comes with a high level of uncertainty.”
The statement added: “There are currently insufficient data available to assess the vaccine efficacy from 65 years of age.
“The AstraZeneca vaccine, unlike the mRNA vaccines, should only be offered to people aged 18-64 years at each stage.”
What does the UK say?
PHE said the vaccine provides reassuring immune responses in elderly people even though the precise level of protection is patchy.
Britain, which was the first country to approve the vaccine, is already rolling out AstraZeneca’s shot alongside one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
“Both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines are safe and provide high levels of protection against COVID-19, particularly against severe disease,” Mary Ramsay, head of immunisations at PHE said in a statement.
“There were too few cases in older people in the AstraZeneca trials to observe precise levels of protection in this group, but data on immune responses were very reassuring.”
Prime minister Boris Johnson...
