PARIS – French President Emmanual Macron said Friday that the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine was found to be “quasi-ineffective” in people over the age of 65 – just hours before the EU drug regulator approved it for use in all adults.
“The real problem with AstraZeneca is that it doesn’t work as we expected,” Macron told a group of reporters, including POLITICO, in Paris. “We are waiting for the EMA [European Medicines Agency] results, but nowadays everything indicates that it is almost ineffective on people over 65, some say 60 years or older. “
Later in the day, the EMA gave the vaccine the green light. It said, “There are not yet enough results in older participants (over 55 years old) to give a figure of how well the vaccine will work in this group. However, protection is expected as there is an immune response at this age. group and based on experience with other vaccines, given that there is reliable information on safety in this population, the scientific experts at the EMA believed that the vaccine could be used in older adults. “
German experts said Thursday that people 65 or older should not receive the AstraZeneca coronavirus shot, which is another blow to European vaccination efforts. The draft recommendation from a committee advising the country’s public health institute argues that more data is needed to determine the vaccine’s effectiveness in this age group.
AstraZeneca rejected the opinion of the German experts, stating that the latest analysis of the clinical trial data does in fact support efficacy in people over 65 and that this information is expected to be published by the EMA in the coming days. A spokesperson added that reports of low efficacy in adults over the age of 65 “do not accurately reflect the totality of the data.”
Macron said problems with the AstraZeneca shot will complicate the vaccination strategy in the EU, as it is largely based on prioritizing the vaccination of the elderly population and health professionals. He said another unforeseen turn was that the vaccines that are more complicated to manufacture and store – which are based on the mRNA technology never before used to produce a vaccine – are the ones that seem to be the best. achieve.
“What no one foresaw, which is both great and one aspect of this crisis, is that the vaccines that worked the best were the most complicated … which means that in this crisis we say production of the Twingo is taking longer than the Tesla we had never produced, ”he said, comparing Renault’s base model to Tesla’s electric car.
Although France is home to the Pasteur Institute that cracked the HIV virus and is named after the inventor of the rabies vaccine, and of other Big Pharma companies such as Sanofi, no French laboratory has yet an approved COVID-19. vaccine.
Macron questioned the strategy of some countries, including the UK, to prioritize a first dose of a vaccine whose effectiveness is based on two doses taken within 28 days.
“If we look at the UK’s strategy – I’m not the commentator on the strategy of others, but we have to be very careful now about comparing vaccine strategies. The goal is not to have the greatest number of first injections, ”he said.
“When you have all the medical agencies and industrialists that say you need two injections to make it work, up to 28 days apart, which is the case with Pfizer / BioNTech. And you have countries whose vaccine strategy is to get there just one jab to administer, I’m not sure it’s very serious, ‘Macron added.
“When I listen to the scientists who say that we speed up the mutations with just one injection because the virus adapts … then we lie to people when we tell them that they were vaccinated by getting one shot of a vaccine that contains two injections exists. “
The vaccination campaign in France got off to a slow start compared to most EU countries and the UK, placing it almost at the bottom of the rankings, although it has ramped up in recent weeks.