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“It is encouraging to see that the immunogenetic responses were similar in young and old adults, and that reactogenicity was lower in older adults, where the severity of Covid-19 is greatest,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson told Reuters.
“The results add to the amount of evidence so far on the safety and immunogenicity of AZD1222,” said the company representative, referring to the technical name of the vaccine.
The news that the elderly get an immune response from the vaccine is good because the immune system weakens with age and the elderly are at increased risk of death from the virus.
On Monday morning, the Financial Times wrote that the vaccine developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca triggers antibodies and T cells in the elderly.
The AstraZeneca vaccine and the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech are the top favorites in the race for the first vaccine from a large pharmaceutical company to be approved by the authorities.
The European Union has reached an agreement for at least 300 million doses of the possible anti-Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and has also reserved 200 million doses of the Pfizer – BioNTech vaccine.
UK public health authorities will begin distributing the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine from next Monday.
Clinical testing of the vaccine resumed in the United States, the only country where it was still suspended after an illness occurred in a participant more than six weeks ago, the pharmaceutical group said on Friday.
AstraZeneca’s covid-19 vaccine precisely follows the genetic instructions programmed by its developers to elicit a strong immune response, according to a comprehensive analysis by independent researchers in the UK.
