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AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot, here at an appointment with Prince Charles
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Chris Jackson / Getty Images
AstraZeneca's vaccine fell into disrepute in the EU early in the vaccination campaign due to doubts about its effectiveness in certain age groups, contractual disputes between the Commission and the British manufacturer and the risk of rare sinus vein thrombosis.
One consequence of the hack: the vaccine was used only to a small extent on the continent, but it was used extensively in the United Kingdom.
Now the CEO of AstraZeneca has attracted attention with a (too) simple calculation.
According to Pascal Soriot, the different uses of the controversial vaccine could explain why hardly any people die from the virus in the UK - but they do so in the EU.
Soriot told the BBC it was “really interesting when you look at the UK.
There was a high spike in infections there, but not as many hospitalizations as in Europe.
In the UK, the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine was used to vaccinate the elderly, while in Europe it was initially thought that the vaccine would not work in the elderly. "
Vaccination rate higher - and a lot more recovered Brits
There is "no evidence" for his theses. You also need "more data to analyze this". In fact, there are - in theory - reasons why the AstraZeneca vaccine could induce slightly different immune responses than, for example, the mRNA vaccine from Biontech, writes the Guardian. Both vaccines provide the cells with the genetic instructions to make the coronavirus spike protein, but AstraZeneca's vaccine does so using a modified virus that the immune system could also respond to.
In fact, other reasons for the lower number of hospitalizations and deaths in Great Britain are also conceivable: The vaccination rate in the UK is, at 68.7 percent of the population, similarly low as in Germany. However, significantly more people were infected with the virus in the first waves of the disease than in Germany - and have thus acquired a certain degree of protection against severe disease. So far, almost 14,400 corona cases per 100,000 inhabitants have been registered in Great Britain, whereas in Germany there were millions of corona cases officially registered, in Germany it is 6400 per 100,000 inhabitants.
More importantly, in the UK, the vaccination rate is significantly higher among the particularly vulnerable elderly citizens.
While in Germany only 85 percent of the age group over 60 are vaccinated, this value is well over 90 percent for Britons.
British scientists are also skeptical about the AstraZeneca boss's statement.
It is probably "a little more complicated," said immunologist Deborah Dunn-Walters.
Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, went a little further.
He thinks it is "daring" to want to reduce the differences to a single factor.
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