Hopes of an effective vaccine against coronavirus becoming available rose again on Monday with AstraZeneca and Oxford University claiming success with their product, becoming the …
Hopes of an effective vaccine against coronavirus becoming available rose again on Monday with AstraZeneca and Oxford University claiming success with their product, becoming the third team to do so. The head of AstraZeneca in France, Olivier Nataf, answered questions from AFP in an interview, saying that the data were very encouraging. Question: The AstraZeneca vaccine is said to be 70 percent effective, a lower figure than those previously announced by Pfizer and Moderna. Could you explain the data? The 70 percent rate is the result of a combined analysis. Using a regimen of first injecting half a dose of the vaccine and then a full dose a month later the effectiveness was 90 percent. Another system, of one full dose first and another a month later the effectiveness is 62 percent. This is an interesting lesson: the half-dose plus one dose scheme can become something that we follow, there is an opportunity for availability for the population, where it would take fewer doses to vaccinate more people.
