The German regulator is expected to pave the way for the vaccination of the elderly with AstraZeneca’s corona vaccine within a few days.
So said Health Minister Jens Spahn, who explained that data from the United Kingdom shows that the drug also works “very well” in the elderly.
In Germany, only people under the age of 65 are currently receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. The underlying reason is that only a limited number of elderly people participated in the drug study. As a result, it was initially not entirely clear how well the drug works in people in that age group.
Spahn now also wants to vaccinate the elderly with the vaccine. “If we can vaccinate people over 65 with AstraZeneca, it would speed up the process quite a bit, and we can protect the most vulnerable people more quickly,” he said on television.
In Germany, many doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine remain on the shelf, also because some citizens prefer to be vaccinated with vaccines they see as more effective. Other European countries are facing similar problems. In France, it turned out that 75 percent of the available doses of that drug had not been used on Tuesday.