Beautiful Virgin Islands

Friday, Jul 17, 2026

Oxford, WHO scientists say more data needed on AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine trials

Oxford, WHO scientists say more data needed on AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine trials

More data is needed from AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine trials beyond what was presented in a press release, experts from the WHO and Oxford University said.

More data will be needed from AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine trials to determine the drug’s safety and efficacy following concerns from experts in the U.S., scientists from the University of Oxford and the World Health Organizations said on Friday.

“There’s always a problem in announcing scientific results by press release, and that is that you don’t have all the data out there and people aren’t able to really look and think about the data properly,” Sir John Bell, the Regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday.

Shares of AstraZeneca dipped this week after the company announced interim results from its coronavirus vaccine trials on Monday. The British pharmaceutical giant said its vaccine, which it’s developing alongside Oxford, was 70% effective after it combined results from two different dosing regimes.

One smaller group of people, all under the age of 55, received an unintentionally lower dose of the vaccine followed by a full dose, and a larger group of people received two full doses of the vaccine. The vaccine was found to be 90% effective in the group that received the smaller dose while the larger group showed only 62% effectiveness.

Some U.S. experts, including Moncef Slaoui, chief of the White House’s Operation Warp Speed, said they were concerned about the differing ages between the two groups. Amid those concerns, Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, told Bloomberg on Thursday that the company will likely begin a new study to examine the lower dosage regime.

“The full data will be published in the medical journal so people can examine it. Taking snippets of data is not a helpful way to make an analysis of what’s actually going on,” Bell told CNBC on Friday.

Other British government ministers and experts have also backed AstraZeneca’s vaccine, noting that drug regulators who have more information on the vaccine’s late-stage clinical trials will ultimately have the final say. Britain asked its medicine regulator on Friday to assess the vaccine for a temporary supply, which means the vaccine could be distributed in the country before the end of the year.


That process could take longer in the U.S., however, amid recent concerns. Bell told CNBC that he predicts the UK could be “substantially vaccinated” by spring of next year.

Kate O’Brien, director of immunization, vaccines and biologicals at WHO, agreed with Bell during the organization’s press briefing earlier on Friday, saying that there’s only a “limited amount that can be said in a press release” and that more information, including how well the vaccine builds an immune response, is needed.

“It’s difficult to weigh in on this,” O’Brien said from the WHO’s Geneva headquarters. “From what we understand about the press release, there is certainly something interesting that has been observed, but there are many reasons that could underlie the differences that were observed.”

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist, concurred and said AstraZeneca’s trial figures “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 said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Britain Nationalises British Steel to Protect Scunthorpe Production and Strategic Supply
Andy Burnham Takes Labour Leadership and Prepares to Become Britain’s Seventh Prime Minister in a Decade
Tech Companies Want to Move Computing Off Your Screen and Onto Your Body
White House Teleprompter Operator Earned More Than $100,000 From Bets Linked to the President's Speeches
French National Assembly Overrides Senate to Pass Historic Assisted-Dying Legislation
Spanish Prime Minister's Wife Ordered to Stand Trial as Corruption Probes Encircle Governing Party
Zelensky Faces Kyiv Protests Over Ousting of Dynamic Ukrainian Defense Minister
Colombia Influencer Dies After Cosmetic Procedure at Unlicensed Bogota Salon
Thomas Tuchel Faces Fierce Backlash After Tactical Retreat Costs England World Cup Final Berth
A Quiet Bastille Day: France Grapples with World Cup Heartbreak and Leftover Fireworks
Canadian Wildfire Crisis Triggers Transnational Air Quality Alerts Ahead of Soccer Finale
Spain in Ecstasy: "We Feel Unbeatable, We Taught the Whole World a Lesson"
Spain and UK Dismantle Gibraltar Border Following Landmark Schengen Integration Treaty
Forget Tinder: The Surprising Platform Where People Find Love
Harvard Astrophysicist to Lead U.S. Scientific Advisory on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
On the Island That Did Not Yield to Trump, There Is No Electricity, and 10 Million Live in Darkness
Emergency Sirens Activated Across Bahrain as Interior Ministry Issues Shelter Directives
World Cup Visitors Turn American Big-Box Stores Into Souvenir Stops
Netflix Weighs Always-On Channels, Bundles and Short-Form Video
Passenger Is Pulled Partly Outside Ryanair Jet After Window Fails Mid-Flight
The AI Invoice Shock: Layoffs Didn't Save Managers Money — They Cost Them More
Concern: Sexually Transmitted Bacterium Among Men Develops Antibiotic Resistance
Following Massive Investor Demand: SK Hynix Raises 26.5 Billion Dollars on Nasdaq
Passenger Partially Pulled Out of Ryanair Jet After Cabin Window Fails Mid-Flight
After Four Years, and Under a Heavy Veil of Secrecy: King Charles Meets His Grandchildren, Harry and Meghan's Children
Severe Heatwave Drives Dangerous Ground-Level Ozone Pollution Across Two Thirds of European Union
Westminster in Freefall as Farage's By-Election Gamble Triggers Broader Systemic Crises
Institutional Fractures and Political Volatility Reshape Britain's Domestic Landscape
Deadly Fire, Health Emergencies and Political Upheaval Shape a Volatile Global News Cycle
Flight Instructor Jumped to His Death — Student Landed the Plane: "You Know What You Need to Do"
The Physical and Electronic Barriers Disrupting Domestic Wireless Networks
France and Morocco Open World Cup Quarter-Finals as Collina Defends Refereeing
Prince Harry Suffers Major Court Defeat in Legal Battle Against Daily Mail Publisher
Bonnie Tyler, Welsh Singer Behind Total Eclipse of the Heart, Dies at 75
Tech Pulse: The Future of AI and Screen Culture
Global News Briefing: Escalating Geopolitical Tensions and Corporate Shakeups
Global News Brief: Escalating Conflicts, Public Health Crises, and World Cup Drama
Federal Financial Framework Shifts as Treasury Launches Universal Savings Program for Minors
French Court Allows Le Pen to Run for Presidency, but with an Electronic Tag: "I Will Appeal, and I Will Run"
$1.4 Trillion: The Lawsuit That Could Crush Meta
Europe's Growing Struggle with Extreme Heat and Air Conditioning
UK Daily Briefing: Legal Developments and Social Issues
Political Turmoil and Rising Costs
Anthropic Reengineers Agentic Architecture to Shift Autonomous Workplace Automation to the Cloud
Logic Flaw in Windows 11 Permission Architecture Silently Consumes Hundreds of Gigabytes of Local Storage
Apple Advances Late-Stage Operating Systems with Fourth Beta Deployments
Global Crisis Alert: Escalating Middle East Tensions and UK Political Upheaval
Deep Purple Has Released Its Best Album in Decades
Microsoft Lays Off 4,800 Employees and Xbox Suffers the Hardest Blow
Morocco and France Advance as 2026 FIFA World Cup Enters Quarterfinals.
×