PARIS – French President Emmanual Macron said on Friday that the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine seemed “almost ineffective” for people over 65, just hours before the EU drug regulator approved it for all. adults.
“The real problem with AstraZeneca is that it doesn’t work the way we expected,” Macron told a group of journalists, including POLITICO, in Paris. “We are waiting for the EMA [European Medicines Agency] results, but today everything points to thinking that it is almost ineffective for people over 65, some say they are 60 or older. “
Later, EMA gave the green light to the vaccine. He said: “There are still not enough results in older participants (over 55 years old) to provide a figure of how the vaccine works in this group. However, protection is expected as an immune response is seen in this group. age group and based on experience with other vaccines, as there is reliable information on safety in this population, EMA scientific experts considered that the vaccine can be used in older adults. “
German experts said Thursday that AstraZeneca coronavirus testing should not be done on people 65 and older, which once again gave European vaccination efforts. The draft recommendation of a committee advising the country’s public health institute stated that more data are needed to determine the effectiveness of the vaccine in this age group.
AstraZeneca rejected the opinion of German experts, stating that the latest analysis of clinical trial data actually supports efficacy in people over 65 and that this information is expected to be published by the EMA in the coming years. days. A spokesman added that reports of low efficacy in adults over 65 “are not an exact reflection of the totality of the data”.
Macron said problems with the AstraZeneca puncture will complicate the vaccination strategy in the EU, as it relies heavily on prioritizing vaccination of the elderly population and health workers. He said another unforeseen turn was that vaccines that are more complicated to produce and store, those based on mRNA technology that had never been used before to produce a vaccine, are the ones that seem to have the best performance. .
“What no one expected, which is both wonderful and one of the aspects of this crisis, is that the vaccines that worked best were the most complicated … that is, in this crisis we are saying that the Twingo takes longer to produce -I know that the Tesla we had never produced, “he said, comparing Renault’s basic model to Tesla’s electric car.
Although in France there is the Institut Pasteur, which broke the HIV virus and is named after the inventor of the rabies vaccine, and other Big Pharma companies like Sanofi, still no French laboratory has produced an approved COVID-19 vaccine.
Macron questioned the strategy of some countries, including the UK, to prioritize a first dose of a vaccine whose effectiveness is based on two doses taken within 28 days.
“If we look at the UK strategy: I’m not the commentator on other people’s strategy, but now we have to be very careful when comparing vaccination strategies. The goal is not to have the highest number of first injections. “, he said.
“When you have all the medical and industrial agencies saying that you need two injections for it to work, with a maximum of 28 days difference, as is the case with Pfizer / BioNTech. And you have countries whose vaccination strategy is to administer only one jab, I’m not sure it’s very serious, “Macron added.
“When I hear scientists say we speed up mutations with a single injection because the virus adapts … we lie to people when we tell them they’ve been vaccinated by injecting a vaccine that consists of two injections.”
The vaccination campaign in France started slowly compared to most EU countries and the UK, placing it at the bottom of the rankings, although it has increased its speed in recent weeks.