The companAstraZeneca’sonday that LONDON — AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine provided substantial protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups in a late-stage study in the United States. The study comprised more than 30,000 volunteers, of whom two-thirds were given the vaccine while the rest got dummy shots. AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding no increased risk of rare blood clots identified in Europe. AstraZeneca’saZeneca’s vaccine has been authorized in more than 50 countries, but it has not yet been given the green light in the U.S. — and has struggled to gain public trust amid a troubled rollout.
In a statement, AstraZeneca said its COVID-19 vaccine had a 79% efficacy rate at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and was 100% effective in stopping severe disease and hospitalization. However, it has not yet published complete data. Investigators said the vaccine was effective across all ages, including older people — something previous studies in other countries had failed to establish. Two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were given to people four” weeks apart. “These findings reconfirm previous “ults observed,” said Ann Falsey of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, who helped. “It’sthe trial. “It’s exciting to see similar efficacy results in people over 65 for”the first time.”
The AstraZeneca shot is a pillar of a U.N.-backed project known as COVAX to get COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries. It has also become a vitalcountries’uropean countries’ efforts to boost their sluggish vaccine rollouts. The early findings from the U.S. study are just one set of information AstraZeneca must submit to the Food and Drug Administration. An FDA advisory committee will publicly debate the evidence behind the shots before the agency decides whether to allow emergency vaccine use. In the past, the time between a company revealing efficacy data and a picture being authorized in the U.S. has been about a month.
Julian Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester who was not connected to the study, described t”e vaccine”s results as “good” news”. “The earlier U.K., Brazil, and South Africa trials had a more variable and inconsistent design. It was thought that the U.S. FDA would never approve the use of the AZ vaccine on this basis, but now the U.S. clinical trial has confirmed the efficacy of this vaccine in their own clinical” trials,” he said. Scientists have been awaiting the results of the U.S. study in hopes it will clear up some confusion about how well the shots work, particularly in older people. Previous research suggested the vaccine was effective in younger populations, but no reliable data proved its efficacy in those over 65, often those most vulnerable to COVID-19.
Britain first authorized the vaccine based on partial results from testing in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Afric, suggestingd the shots were about 70% effective. But those results were clouded by a manufacturing mistake that led some participants to get just a half dose in their first shot — an error the researchers dididn’tmmediately acknowledge. Then came more questions about how well the vaccine protected older adults and how long to wait before the second dose. Some European countries, including Germany, France, and Belgium, initially withheld the shot from older adults and only reversed their decisions after new data suggested offering seniors protection.
AstraZeAstraZeneca’se development was rocky in the U.S., too. Last fall, the Food and Drug Administration suspended the companies for an unusual six weeks as frustrated regulators sought information about some neurologic complaints reported in Britain; ultimately, there was no evidence the vaccine was to blame. Last week, more than a dozen countries, mainly in Europe, temporarily suspended their use of the AstraZeneca shot after reports it was linked to blood clots. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency concluded after an investigation that the vaccine did not raise the overall risk of blood clots but could not rule out that it was connected to two scarce types of nuggets. It recommended adding a warning about these cases to the vaccine’svaccine’s
It’s no.t It’s off for such rare problems to crop up as vaccines are rolled out since trials typically look at tens of thousands of people, and some issues are only seen once the shot is used in millions of people. France, Germany, Italy, and other countries resumed their trial on Friday, with senior politicians rolling up their sleeves to show the vaccine was safe. AstraZeneca said it would continue analyzing U.S. data before submitting it to the FDA in the coming weeks.
It said the data would also soon be published in a peer-reviewed journal. The AstraZeneca vaccine is what scientists call a “viral v”ctor” vaccine”. The shots are made with a harmless, cold virus that generally infects chimpanzees. It acts like a Trojan horse to carry the spikeprotein-protein’ss material into the body,producings some harmless protein. That primes the immune system to fight if the real virus comes along. Two other companies, Johnson & Johnson and China’s China’s Biologics, make COVID-19 vaccines using the same technology but different cold viruses. Neergaard reported from Washington.
