IT is becoming increasingly apparent that the fanfare over the vaccine trial results from Oxford University/AstraZeneca and the UK Government may have been overblown in regards to the potential protection elicited by the 100 million doses of vaccine bought by the UK from AstraZeneca.

With headlines such as “Covid-19: Oxford University vaccine is highly effective” from the BBC and similar hype from other media outlets it is now time for scrutiny.

The information (in form of clarifications) that has been drip-fed by AstraZeneca over the last few days is quite frankly astonishing and should be ringing alarm bells. This could have major consequences for a vaccination strategy both in Scotland and in the UK in general.

The following has now come to light: the low-dose “regime” was in fact a result of a serious dosing error – the amount of vaccine was apparently miscalculated for the Brazilian portion of the trial. This has now been admitted by AstraZeneca.

Luckily the error was in the form of a dilution and, according to reports, the vaccine trial volunteers suffered no harm as a result. The error was picked up only after the volunteers received the vaccine – they apparently suffered fewer inflammatory adverse events.

While such a serious breach of a clinical trial protocol is astonishing in itself, the hype over efficacy levels of 90% now needs serious examination. It has been revealed by the Oxford/AstraZeneca consortium that this level of efficacy only pertains to the cohort in Brazil who received the low dose in error.

The numbers involved in the dosage given in error now rebranded as the “half dose, full dose” regime was just 2741 but crucially no one over 55 received this dose.

Therefore there is no scientific evidence, yet presented, that the vaccine is effective at 90% in the over-55s. The best that can be said at this stage is the 62% efficacy claim based on the 8895 volunteers (presumably from a wider age group range) who received the correct dose.

This raises immediate concerns in regard to immunising the over-55s in the immediate future with a vaccine that appears to provide a relatively poor level of protection compared to those being produced by other companies.

Since the bulk of vaccines ordered by the UK Government are from AstraZeneca, the question arises – do we really want to give our elderly and vulnerable a vaccine that is only 62% effective when other vaccine vaccines are available with apparently higher protection rates?

Imagine if only around 60% of the residents and staff of a care home are protected while the bulk of the population are still waiting for their immunisation or worse still a sizeable proportion refuse a vaccine. Furthermore, it is possible that foreign travel in a few months time may depend on individuals proving they have been vaccinated.

If the efficacy of the Oxford vaccine is relatively poor in older age groups – people vaccinated with it may be seen as problematic by destination countries.

Given all this, the Scottish Government needs to consider prioritising the vaccines which show better levels of protection for the older age groups.

Furthermore, questions need to be asked about how much Mr Hancock and Prime Minister Johnson knew about the problems over the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial when the “interim results” were announced a few days ago and why they failed to be transparent over the lack of evidence for high levels of efficacy in the over-55s comparable with other vaccines emerging.

Iain Forbes
Edinburgh