LONDON (AP) – The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has provided strong protection against disease and complete protection against hospitalization and death in all age groups in a late US study, the company said on Monday.
AstraZeneca said its experts also did not identify vaccine-related safety issues, including a blood clot rarely identified in Europe. Scientists did not find an increased risk of clots among the more than 20,000 people who received at least one dose of the AstraZeneca shot.
Although the AstraZeneca vaccine has been licensed in more than 50 countries, it has not yet been given the green light in the United States. The US study included more than 30,000 volunteers, two-thirds of whom received the vaccine, while the rest received fictitious photos.
In a statement, AstraZeneca said its COVID-19 vaccine has a 79% efficacy rate in preventing symptomatic COVID and is 100% effective in stopping severe illness and hospitalization. Investigators said the vaccine was effective at all ages, including the elderly – which previous studies in other countries have failed to establish.
“These findings reconfirm previous findings,” said Ann Falsey of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, who helped lead the process. “It’s exciting to see similar efficacy results in people over 65 for the first time.”
Julian Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester who had nothing to do with the study, described it as “good news” for the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“Previous studies in the UK, Brazil and South Africa had a more variable and inconsistent design and it was believed that the US FDA would never approve the use of the AZ vaccine on this basis, but now the US clinical study has confirmed the effectiveness of this vaccine in own clinical trials, “he said.
The first findings from the US study are just a set of information that AstraZeneca needs to pass on 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 use of the vaccine.
The scientists waited for the results of the US study in the hope that it would clear up some of the confusion over how well the photos work.
The United Kingdom first authorized the vaccine based on partial results from tests in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa, which suggested that the fires were about 70% effective. But these results were clouded by a production error that caused some participants to receive only half a dose in their first shot – an error that the researchers did not immediately recognize.
Then came more questions about how well the vaccine protected the elderly and how long you have to wait before the second dose. Some European countries, including Germany, France and Belgium, initially withheld shooting from older adults and overturned their decisions only after new data suggested they were protecting the elderly.
The development of the AstraZeneca vaccine was also rocky in the USA. Last fall, the Food and Drug Administration suspended the company’s study of 30,000 Americans for an unusual six weeks as frustrated regulators sought information on some neurological complaints reported in the UK; Finally, there was no evidence that the vaccine was to blame.
Last week, more than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, temporarily suspended the use of the AstraZeneca photo after reporting that it was linked to blood clots. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency concluded after an investigation that the vaccine did not increase the overall risk of blood clots, but could not rule out that it was connected to two very rare types of clots.
France, Germany, Italy and other countries later resumed using the shot on Friday, with senior politicians rolling up their sleeves to show that the vaccine is safe.
AstraZeneca said it will continue to analyze US data in preparation for submission to the FDA in the coming weeks. He said the data would soon be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is what scientists call a “viral vector” vaccine. The photos are taken with a harmless virus, a cold virus that normally infects chimpanzees. It acts like a Trojan horse to carry the genetic material of the peak protein into the body, which in turn produces some harmless proteins. It prepares the immune system to fight if the real virus appears.
Two other companies, Johnson & Johnson and China’s CanSino Biologics, produce COVID-19 vaccines using the same technology, but using different cold viruses.
The AstraZeneca blow has become a key tool in European countries’ efforts to intensify their slow vaccine launch. It is also the backbone of a UN-backed project known as COVAX, which aims to transport COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries.
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Neergaard reported from Washington.
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