Vaccination (STIKO) on a standing committee at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Germany, the country’s chief public health officer, found that insufficient data on the effectiveness of vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University were for this age group. According to a statement from the Interior Ministry on Thursday.
“Due to the small number of participants in the age group participants કારણે years study, no conclusions can be drawn about their effectiveness and safety in the elderly. Therefore, the vaccine is currently only recommended by STIKO for people aged 18-64.” Stated in his recommendation.
Thursday’s announcement by the German Interior Ministry comes amid an ongoing dispute between the European Union and AstraZeneca over delays in delivering its coronavirus vaccine to the block.
AstraZeneca has said it will not be able to deliver as many doses as the EU expects, citing production challenges. But the European Commission, which orders the vaccine on behalf of EU member states, says this is unacceptable, and the drug manufacturer must find a way to increase supply.
The EU has ordered 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine – which could be approved for use by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Friday alone – with the option to purchase an additional 100 million doses.
A spokesman for AstraZeneca said it would wait for a regulatory decision by the EMA soon. “Reports that the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine is less effective in adults over the age of 65 are not an accurate reflection of the completeness of the data,” the spokesman said.
“The latest analysis supports supportive efficacy in this age group, which we expect to be published by EMA in the coming days. A recent Lancet publication showed that older adults showed an immune response to the vaccine with 100% older people. Spike-specific antibodies. ”
Soriot said the reason Oxford scientists conducted the vaccine trial was that they did not want to recruit older people unless they collected “a lot of safety data” for people aged 18 to 55.
“Essentially, because Oxford started vaccinating older people later, we don’t have a large number of older people who are vaccinated. So that’s just the debate.” “But we have strong data showing very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, as we see in younger people. It is possible that some countries, with caution, will use our vaccine for a smaller group.”
Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacopidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, insisted that the German decision was “not a regulatory decision, but a draft of advice on consumption”, in a comment from the UK’s Media Media Center.
“It was well known that the clinical data for this vaccine was limited to people aged 70 or older,” he said, as AstraZeneca recruited older age groups than older ones, giving the case less time to grow.
“There is no reason in the UK or anyone else to think that the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is ineffective at any age,” Evans said. “Its ability to deliver people to GP surgery and care homes makes it an important component in efforts to reduce hospital admissions and deaths, especially in the elderly.”
Jim Nasmith, director of the Rosland Franklin Institute and a professor of structural biology at Oxford University, also sought to allay concerns, with German scientists saying the vaccine was safe and effective for under-65s.
“Their assessment is that they have not been shown to be effective for more than 65 years. They have not said that the vaccine has not been effective for more than 65 years.”
“Good-natured discussions about what evidence is needed for the effectiveness of the vaccine are really important. Experimental evidence and rational discussion, not hot rhetoric, will solve this issue.”
EU-AstraZeneca controversy
Belgian health officials – at the request of the European Commission – conducted an “inspection” of the UK-Swedish drugmaker’s Belgian manufacturing facility on Wednesday amid a dispute between the European Union and AstraZeneca over vaccine delays. “The purpose was to ensure that the delay in the delivery of the vaccine was indeed due to a production problem at the Belgian site,” said Fran ડેois Damemel, a spokesman for Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbrock, in a statement.
“Belgian experts, in conjunction with Dutch, Italian and Spanish experts, are examining the elements obtained during this inspection visit,” Demmel said, adding that a report is expected in a few days.
The German government expects the country to face a shortage in its coronavirus vaccine supply for at least another 10 weeks, amid a backlash against the government’s vaccine rollout program, Health Minister Jens Spahe said.
Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus infections per 100,000 inhabitants in Germany in seven days has fallen below the critical threshold of 100 for the first time in three months, the RKI said on Thursday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has outlined the government The plan is to reduce the incidence rate to less than 50 per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days to be able to track and trace the infection.
CNN’s Nadine Schmidt and Claudia Otto from Berlin and Laura Smith-Spark from London.
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