The AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which has sometimes had an ominous battle between the EU and Britain, has also sparked debate over its efficacy among the elderly.
Although the European Medicines Agency last week recommended the vaccine for adults of all ages, several countries have advised against administering the sting to older people.
Germany has already said it will not advise people over 65 to get it.
The Italian Medicines 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 charged with vaccinations, told reporters on Monday.
And France will be the next EU nation to announce its own recommendation on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been shown in clinical trials to be 62 percent effective in preventing Covid-19.
The biggest problem is around the lack of data among elderly participants.
The developers AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have transparently stated that less than ten per cent of those on whom they tested the vaccine were 65 years or older.
Only 450 participants were older than 70.
This compares with more than 40 percent of participants in the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine trials who were older than 55.
– ‘Misunderstanding’ –
This does not mean that the AstraZeneca vaccine does not work well in the elderly, but that there is little data to prove that it does work.
“It’s sad to see people misunderstand the situation here,” said Peter English, a consultant in communicating diseases.
“They confuse an absence of evidence with evidence of absence.”
The EMA said there is insufficient information to know for sure how effective the AstraZeneca vaccine is in older individuals.
“However, protection is expected as an immune response is seen in this age group,” he said.
It concluded that the vaccine ‘could be used in older adults’, as was already the case in Britain, which was the first country to authorize its use.
However, it remained cautious, noting that ‘data currently available for clinical trials do not allow an estimate of the efficacy of vaccines in subjects older than 55 years.’
– ‘Demand Management’ –
The scientific debate on efficiency comes amid a political debate on logistics.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant said on Sunday that it would increase vaccine delivery to the EU by 30 per cent, while a week earlier it was said that it could only deliver a quarter of the doses the bloc had originally promised.
French President Emmanuel Macron lined up last week, citing reports that the vaccine is “quasi-ineffective” for people over 65.
“What I can officially tell you today is that the early results we have are not encouraging for 60- to 65-year-olds about AstraZeneca,” he said.
In response, John Bell, one of Oxford’s vaccine developers, told the BBC he expected Macron’s comments to be “a bit of demand management”.
Disease specialist Eric Caumes pointed out on Monday that several countries, including France, are vaccinating people over the age of 80 with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
“We do not know its effectiveness in this age group,” he told BFMTV.
pr / pg / mh / ach