AstraZeneca vaccine not recommended for over 65s - German vaccine committee

[Dubliner]

AstraZeneca vaccine not recommended for over 65s - German vaccine committee

Updated / Thursday, 28 Jan 2021 16:46

AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine should only be given to people aged between 18 and 64, Germany's vaccine committee STIKO has said in a draft update to its vaccine recommendation.

"There are currently insufficient data available to assess the vaccine efficacy from 65 years of age," the committee said in the resolution made available by the German health ministry.

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

The European Medicines Agency is expected to make a decision on whether to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine tomorrow.

In response to reports that German authorities have not advised AstraZeneca for use in the over 65s, HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid said that "we have to let the EMA process to continue".

He said the HSE is looking at everything to do with vaccine roll-out from a contingency perspective.

Mr Reid said if the AstraZeneca vaccine does get approval, the HSE will look at what settings it is approved in and how the roll-out plan mobilises to deliver that. 

"We would always be looking at various scenarios," he said

The HSE's chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry said "a relatively small proportion of people in older age groups were examined" in the AstraZeneca trials.

He added: "Whether you can extrapolate from that to say therefore that it is not effective because of a dearth of evidence of one demographic is up to the EMA to determine. 

"We know that it is being deployed at scale in the UK." 

Dr Henry said the HSE has seen the report from the German vaccine committee "but the EMA is who we listen to tomorrow".