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The executive director of the British laboratory AstraZeneca, Pascal Soriot, said on Thursday (26) that it is necessary to do more studies on its vaccine against Covid-19, developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford (United Kingdom), because questions about the protection that can offer against coronavirus.
“Now that we’ve gotten to what appears to be greater efficacy, we have to validate that, so we need an additional study,” Soriot said in an interview with Bloomberg.
The British laboratory and the University of Oxford announced this Monday that, according to the results of clinical trials conducted in the United Kingdom and Brazil, their vaccine has an average effectiveness of up to 90%.
However, there are differences between the data from two different groups. A smaller group, receiving the first half of the dose and the full dose a month later, were 90% effective.
A second, much larger group, which received two doses of the vaccine one month apart, showed an efficacy of 62%.
Andrew Pollard, a scientist at the University of Oxford, explained that the difference can be explained because “by giving a lower first dose, we are preparing the immune system in a different way, we are preparing it better to respond.”
However, the scientists recognized that the lower amount initially given to the first group came from a dose error that the researchers decided to take advantage of later.
It was concluded that, in addition to being much smaller, this group had an age limit of 55 years.
You should not delay approval
The data raised doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccine in the elderly, causing AstraZeneca’s shares to fall on the stock market, but apparently it did not concern British government doctors, who invested heavily in this project.
“There is always a scientific debate on everything,” said chief medical adviser Chris Whitty at a news conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “The answer is to leave it to the regulators. It is always a mistake to make too many interpretations too early,” he said.
To confirm the results, another “international study” is likely to be carried out, Soriot said.
“But it can be faster because we know that the effectiveness is high and we need fewer patients,” he added. He stressed that further research should not delay approval of the vaccine by health regulatory agencies.
The other two highly advanced vaccines, developed by the American laboratories Pfizer and Moderna, showed greater than 90% efficacy in clinical trials.
However, the AstraZeneca project has the advantage of using traditional technology that makes it much cheaper: it would cost US $ 4 a dose compared to more than US $ 25 for the others.
The laboratory has also promised to distribute it at cost price to the poorest countries.
The British vaccine also has the advantage that it can be kept refrigerated at least between 2ºC and 8ºC for at least six months, which facilitates its distribution worldwide, compared to Pfizer, which must be stored at -70ºC in deep freezers.
