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Originally Posted by 1andrew1
Minor point of accuracy - AstraZeneca's offices are not being raided, it's a Belgium contractor's factory that manufacturere the vaccine that is being raided.
In other news, Germany is recommending over-65s are not given the AstraZeneca vaccine.
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Germany's decision regarding the AZ vaccine is perverse, given how far behind they have got with vaccinating their population. It's true that older patients are under-represented in the trial data; this is because the trials were done by Oxford University, which operates to an academic ethical research policy that states you don't give trial drugs to older people until its safety and efficacy is proven among younger, fitter test subjects. This resulted in fewer older trial participants than might have been the case had AstraZeneca handled the process themselves from start to finish. However, there is no data to suggest its efficacy drops off so dramatically that it ought not to be used in older patients. This looks like another incidence of vaccine nationalism to me - bigging up the reputation of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine that is at least part-German.