Vaccine BAN: Germany to stop giving AstraZeneca jab to over-65s in bombshell move

Germany’s vaccine committee made the announcement this afternoon, and said the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be given to people aged under 65. The update to its vaccine recommendation is due to lack of sufficient data to recommend use in older age groups, it said.

A statement by the Standing Vaccine Commission at the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s main public health agency, said: “There are currently insufficient data available to assess the vaccine efficacy from 65 years of age.

“The AstraZeneca vaccine, unlike the mRNA vaccines, should only be offered to people aged 18-64 years at each stage.”

The group added: “Apart from this limitation, this vaccine is also considered to be equally suitable.”

Shares in AstraZeneca fell 2.4 percent after the independent commission made the announcement.

Germany has already started to vaccinate its population with the Pfizer jab.

But the body said the Pfizer and Moderna jabs were judged to be “equivalent in terms of safety and efficacy”.

The recommendation by the commission could lead to the vaccination regulation in Germany having to be changed.

Currently only people in risk group one are vaccinated, which includes residents and staff of nursing homes, people aged 80 and over and hospital employees at particularly high risk.

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But the majority of participants in the study were no more than 55 years old.

Only a small subgroup, about eight percent, comprised people between the ages of 56 and 69. Just under four percent of participants were people over the age of 70.

Earlier in the week German newspaper Handelsblatt claimed the AstraZeneca vaccine might only have an efficacy of about eight percent among those aged over 65.

But experts strongly refuted the claims, with a University of Oxford spokesperson saying clinical trials showed similar immune responses in younger and older adults, a good safety profile and high efficacy in younger adults.

They said: “There is no basis for the claims of very low efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which have been circulating in the media.”

The University did acknowledge less data from older adults were involved in the trials, but the team said early figures were promising: “Preliminary efficacy data in older adults supports the importance of this vaccine for use in this population.”

A spokesman for AstraZeneca also denied the reports were valid.

They said: “Reports that the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine efficacy is as low as 8 percent in adults over 65 years are completely incorrect.

“In the UK, the [Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] supported use in this population and MHRA included this group without dose adjustment in the authorisation for emergency supply.

“In November, we published data in the Lancet demonstrating that older adults showed strong immune responses to the vaccine, with 100% of older adults generating spike-specific antibodies after the second dose.”

Additional reporting by Monika Pallenberg

source: express.co.uk