AstraZeneca denies that the vaccine is less effective in the elderly

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

The German newspaper Handelsblatt and Bild said in separate reports that the vaccine, developed jointly by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, had an efficacy of 8% or less than 10%, respectively, in those over 65 years of age.

German officials were concerned that the vaccine would not receive approval from the EU drug authority EMA for use in people over 65, Bild said in its online edition.

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 having vaccine production problems.

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

In a written response, AstraZeneca described reports in German media that its COVID-19 vaccine showed that it had a very low efficacy in the elderly as “completely incorrect.”

The Joint Vaccination and Vaccination Committee of Great Britain supported the use of the vaccine in the elderly. It was also said that a strong immune response to the vaccine had been demonstrated in the blood tests of participants in elderly trials.

On December 30, Britain became the first country to approve the two-shot vaccine and did not impose an upper age limit. So far it has focused on seniors and health workers for its vaccination campaign.

AstraZeneca’s main trial in Britain began testing in adults under the age of 55 because it initially focused on healthcare staff and active-duty front-line workers.

Participants in trials for the elderly were recruited later, so infections, which are necessary to obtain reliable efficacy data, would also arrive later.

Researchers at Oxford University said in a paper published in the medical journal The Lancet on December 8, when details of key vaccine trials in Britain and Brazil were published, that efficacy data based on infections in the elderly were still limited.

“Efficacy data in these cohorts are currently limited by the small number of (infection) cases, but additional data will be available in future analyzes,” the document said.