AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine should only be given to people aged under 65, Germany's vaccine committee said in an update to its vaccine recommendation, citing a lack of sufficient data to recommend use in older age groups.
“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 on Thursday.
“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 AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine on Friday.
On Monday, a spokesman for the German health minister Jens Spahn joined AstraZeneca in dismissing reports by two German newspapers that the British drugmaker's Covid vaccine was less effective in the elderly.
Spahn then said he expected European authorities to approve the third vaccine against Covid-19 on Friday.
Late on Monday, Handelsblatt and Bild each reported that the vaccine had an efficacy of less than 10 per cent in those over 65 and that the German government was bracing for the European healthcare regulator to only clear it for those below that age.
At the time, AstraZeneca described the reports as “completely incorrect”.
When asked about the prospect of an approval only for younger adults, Spahn's spokesman said this was up to EU regulators and that AstraZeneca trials had a lower rate of elderly participants than competing vaccine developers.
