London: Top scientist of the World Health Organization says more data is needed to determine if the coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca works. The report from Oxford and AstraZeneca was out on Monday stating that their vaccine appeared 62% effective in people receiving two doses and 90% effective if volunteers given a half dose followed by a full dose. Later, they acknowledged a manufacturing issue had resulted in a half dose mistakenly being administered as the first dose to some participants. The WHO’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said in media at a Friday briefing that “the numbers are still too small to really come to any definitive conclusions”. Less than 3,000 trial participants were in the group that was given the smaller dose of the company’s vaccine compared with more than 8,000 in the larger group.
“If we are to explore this hypothesis of having perhaps a better efficacy with the lower dose, then it would need a trial,” Swaminathan also said. In the study followed, 2,741 people got a half dose followed by a full dose while 8,895 people got two full doses. None of the people in the half-dose regimen were over age 55.
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