AstraZeneca’s clinical trial shows the company’s two-shot COVID-19 vaccine has an efficacy rate of 79 percent in the US.
Use of AZ’s vaccine in Europe was temporarily halted on fears it was leading to incidents of blood clotting. Tulane School of Medicine Professor Doctor Lisa Morici said the data did not support that decision.
“The number of clots in the general population are expected to occur at a particular rate and the rate in people receiving the vaccine was really no higher than what you would expect to see,” said Morici.
30,000 people participated in the study.
Morici said AZ’s vaccine is similar to Johnson and Johnson’s in that it uses an adenoviral vector and can be stored for months in regular refrigerators, which will help in distributing the vaccine to many other parts of the world.
Earlier this month the Biden Administration announced it would send a significant portion of the AstraZeneca US stockpile to Mexico and Canada. Morici said because we may have enough Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines to vaccinate everyone in the US there’s a chance Louisianans may not end up taking AstraZeneca.
“If we don’t immunize the rest of the globe we will always be faced with this virus so we really must think of global immunization and not just immunization in the United States,” said Morici.
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