After hopeful news of an economical vaccine to fight against COVID-19 was announced, there was light at the end of the nearly year-long pandemic tunnel, but questions arose surrounding the AstraZeneca, University of Oxford vaccine about the dosing used during the treatment’s trial, The New York Times reported.
Specifically, there were mistakes when it came to the dosing for some of the test subjects.
Scientists and experts said not only were there mistakes but also other issues with the study and how the company announced the data surrounding testing has lessened the confidence of their results, The Times reported.
U.S. officials agree there are questions about the results, saying the leaders of the country’s vaccine initiative were the ones who found the issues, not the company.
They also said the results don’t show how the most promising results worked with older people.
>>Related: AstraZeneca says interim analysis shows COVID-19 vaccine 70% effective on average
A company spokesperson spoke out against the concerns, saying the trials “were conducted to the highest standards,” the Times reported.
In light of the findings, the company may have to perform a global trial of the vaccine to test the efficacy of the treatment, Bloomberg reported.
“Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” AstraZeneca CEO, Pascal Soriot said, according to Bloomberg.
He added it would be another “international study, but this one could be faster because we know the efficacy is high so we need a smaller number of patients,” Bloomberg reported.
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