The subject of a sometimes bitter discussion between the EU and Britain, the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has also fueled the debate about its effectiveness among the elderly.
Although the European Medicines Agency recommended the vaccine to adults of all ages last week, several countries have advised against administering the vaccine to older people.
Germany has already said that it would not advise people over 65 to obtain it.
The Italian drug agency on Saturday approved the vaccine for all adults, but recommended alternatives for people over 55.
“It is clear that the elderly will not be vaccinated with this vaccine,” Michal Dworczyk, the Polish government official in charge of the vaccination, told reporters.
And France should be the next EU country to announce its own recommendation on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been shown in clinical trials to be 62% effective in preventing Covid-19.
The main problem revolves around the lack of data among the elderly participants in the study.
The developers at AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford were transparent in disclosing that less than 10% of those who tested the vaccine were 65 or older.
Only 450 participants were more than 70.
This compares with more than 40 percent of participants in the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine trials who were over 55 years old.
– ‘Misunderstanding’ –
This does not mean that the AstraZeneca vaccine does not work well among the elderly, but that there is little data to prove that it does.
“It’s sad to see people misunderstand the situation here,” said Peter English, a communicable disease control consultant.
“They are confusing absence of evidence with evidence of absence.”
The EMA said there is not enough data to know for sure how effective the AstraZeneca vaccine is in older individuals.
“However, protection is expected, since an immune response is seen in this age group,” he said.
He concluded that the vaccine “can be used in the elderly”, as is already the case in Great Britain, which was the first country to authorize its use.
However, he remained cautious, noting that “data from currently available clinical trials do not allow an estimate of the vaccine’s effectiveness in individuals over 55 years of age.”
– ‘Demand management’ –
The scientific debate on effectiveness arises in the midst of a politician on logistics.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant said on Sunday that it would increase its vaccine deliveries to the EU by 30 percent, backing down in an announcement the previous week saying it could only deliver a quarter of the doses originally promised to the bloc.
French President Emmanuel Macron entered the race last week, citing reports that the vaccine was “almost ineffective” for people over 65.
“What I can officially say today is that the first results we have are not encouraging for people aged 60 to 65 compared to AstraZeneca,” he said.
In response, John Bell, one of the vaccine’s developers in Oxford, told the BBC that he expected Macron’s comments to be “a little bit of demand management”.
Disease expert Eric Caumes pointed out on Monday that several countries, including France, are vaccinating people over 80 with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
“We don’t know its effectiveness in this age group,” he told BFMTV.
pr / pg / mh / ach