15th February 2021
Spain bans Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for people over 55 as jab restricted- Latest EU snub to UK
By Express UK
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The country's health chiefs have authorised the use of the drug to inoculate people aged between 18 and 55 but followed France, Germany, Italy and Austria in imposing age restrictions amid concerns over a lack of data on it use on the elderly. Italy also recommends its preferential use for adults of 55 and under, while Germany, France, Austria and Norway will only administer the shot to people younger than 65.
Spain's decision comes just hours after UK drugs regulators received extra trial data from AstraZeneca which supports their view that the vaccine is effective in the elderly.
In an initial phase aimed at protecting care-home residents and workers and front-line medics, Spain has so far administered 1.87 million doses produced by Pfizer and Moderna.
It expects a delivery of 1.8 million AstraZeneca doses this month to speed up the pace of inoculation and help it hit a target of vaccinating 70 percent of the population by summer.
Britain has been rolling out the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot among all age groups after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was the first regulator to approve it in December.
Munir Pirmohamed, Chair of the Commission on Human Medicines' Covid-19 Vaccines Benefit Risk Expert Working Group said British regulators had noticed the smaller number of under-65s in the data when they approved the vaccine.
He said: "Nevertheless, there was no evidence that those people over 65 were not getting evidence of efficacy.
"Since then we've seen more data coming through from AstraZeneca as more people are completing the trial, which highlights again that efficacy in the elderly is seen, and there's no evidence of lack of efficacy."
Dr Pirmohamed said elderly people were generating strong immune responses, and said that the most important thing was that both AstraZeneca's vaccine and a shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech were preventing serious disease and deaths.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that the EU has decided not to compromise on safety as she defends the slower pace of approval of shots in the bloc.
MHRA Chief Executive June Raine defended the regulator's standards when asked if the UK had compromised on safety and efficacy standards.
She said: "I think our position is very clear in terms of the rigorous science that MHRA pursues in the interests of public confidence, public safety, and the effectiveness of these important vaccines."
Trials have also suggested the vaccine is successful against new strains of the virus.
Oxford University said it had found the vaccine had similar efficacy against the variant first identified in Kent as previously circulating strains.
Spain's third wave of Covid-19 infections has been slowing with the country's 14-day incidence rate falling to 751 cases per 100,000 people today from 900 cases in late January.
But officials have warned the confirmed arrival of new strains of the virus could drive another resurgence in cases.
The health ministry recorded 28,565 new cases today, bringing the total above 2.94 million, while the death toll climbed by 584 to 61,386.
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