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Norway and Finland announced that they will not vaccinate the elderly with a novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) vaccine jointly developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University in the UK.
According to the Reuters news agency on the 4th (local time), the Norwegian Institute for Public Health (FHI) said that it plans not to provide the AstraZeneca vaccine to the elderly over the age of 65. He pointed out that the number of participants over 65 years of age in the clinical trial of AstraZeneca vaccine lacked records regarding the efficacy and safety of the vaccine in the elderly.
On the 3rd, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) also restricted the number of people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine to under the age of 70 for the same reason. THL recommends that the AstraZeneca vaccine should only be used in people under the age of 70 until further research on the effectiveness of the vaccine in the elderly is available.
On the 29th of last month, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended approval for conditional use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for those over the age of 18. However, concerns over vaccination for the elderly continued. This is because there are fewer subjects over 65 years of age among clinical trial subjects.
Accordingly, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Poland recommended that elderly people 65 years of age or older should not get AstraZeneca vaccine, and Switzerland refused to approve the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on the 3rd. However, Switzerland said, “We need to obtain more clinical data for accurate evaluation,” and said it will wait for the results of Phase 3 clinical trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine in progress in North and South America.
Reporter Seok Kyung-min [email protected]
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