Name: US trial of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine confirms safety and effectiveness - BBC News
Uploaded: 2021-03-23T18:35:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 16 s
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Results from the long awaited US trial of the Oxford AstraZeneca covid vaccine are out and confirmed the shot is both safe and highly effective.

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But trust in the jab has plunged in many European countries because of safety concerns.

Latest polls have found that over 60% of people questioned in France and more than half of those interviewed in Germany thought the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was unsafe.

Health correspondent Dominic Used has more the vaccination program now well underway in the United States.

A new trial has cleared the way for the AstraZeneca job to be added to the armory.

It confirms it's safe and effective, especially for older people.

That adds to the growing body of evidence from the use of the jab in millions of patients in the U.

We do, of course, have a lot of data now coming through from the UK on the use of the vaccine in older people in people over 70 and people over 80 and showing that in real world use of the vaccine there is very high effectiveness of the vaccine.

It's keeping people out of hospital, is stopping and getting infected even in these older age groups, these empty chairs at a German vaccination centre back up a new survey suggesting many in Europe have lost confidence in the AstraZeneca job following a scare over blood clots.

Even though the vaccine has now been given the all clear by the EU medicines regulator, it shows just how easily faith in vaccines can be undermined and a rising wave of infections across the continent frozen to doubt.

The hopes of so many people are filling up these empty beaches this summer.

If those brakes can go ahead, vaccination and testing will be crucial.

This is where the efforts of the Spanish government are at the moment, and I'm sure with this the summer will look brighter.

And of course, we will be more than glad to receive our tourists from the UK as as we've always had.

But the prospect of holidaymakers returning from countries currently in the middle of a fresh outbreak is causing concern.

Keeping track of those new variants will be one of the biggest challenges for the coming months, a new process of genetic screening that could have the time it takes to detect known variants is now undergoing trials.

It's another weapon in what will be a long fight against coronavirus.

Okay, I'm joined now by Calum Semple, professor of Outbreak Medicine at the University of Liverpool in the UK.

So much for joining us here on the program.

This trial really is the good news that AstraZeneca so desperately needed.

It's been conducted in three more geographically distinct countries, and it validates the results found in Britain, South Africa and Brazil.

And yet when we were just showing our peace there, I mean empty vaccination centres, people concerned about getting vaccinated.

The overall reputational damage to AstraZeneca as a result of the politicization of this vaccine is huge.

It's most unfortunate, and we have to stress if you want to get a disease that causes clots, some of the worst clots that can kill you catch covid.

That's very different from saying entirely risk free.

Crossing the road has some risks in it, but we still have to cross the road.

But this vaccine will protect you from death and critical illness and all protect most people from acquisition and minor disease.

The risk of clots if it's real and we don't know it is, is incredibly small compared to the benefit from the vaccine.

There's one other feature we know about to.

Some people catch covid around the time that they're vaccinated, and that could be confusing the signal here of this phenomenon where a very few people have been noted to have developed cloths.

So I think people need to take advice from the regulators we've now heard from the World Health Organization.

We've heard for the M H R A in the UK, and we've heard from the European Union's regulator that this vaccine is safe when the trial's produced such good results and as you say, these sort of reassuring remarks from different health organizations.

Why, then, is AstraZeneca getting such bad press?

I think this is partly to do with fake news, the power of the Echo Chamber of Social Media and sadly, there is some politics coming in here as well from some countries who are trying to get hold of more vaccine when they didn't put orders in earlier than other countries.

I think it's frankly unprofessional when politicians do that.

Health and scientists have done their absolute utmost to generate safe vaccines and to distribute these and for politics to enter this at this stage is most unfortunate.

Thank you so much for joining us here on the program.