Originally Posted by
bigjoe
(just in case somebody else is interested in bringing this back to the vaccination issue) - Yes, the Germans are saying its efficacy is unproven for over 65s. This is because most testing was done on younger people, partly due to the hope that they'd be more resilient to any possible vaccine side-effects. There isn't much data for over 65s as they were deliberately not targeted in the trials. However, there is no evidence to say that the efficacy is very much different in the over 65s. It would not be surprising if it'd be lower as older people (ahem , me) typically do not produce as many antibodies as a younger person after vaccination.
AZ claim that their limited results suggest that the vaccine is effective for over 65s (they do not claim any more as I guess that the sample size is probably too small to be statistically significant).
However, you could see who was being hospitalised due to COVID. Those people were used to determine which parts of the population were most vulnerable and most likely to take up beds. This was at least partly how it was decided who should be vaccinated during the first round(s) of vaccination (I don't know how these hospital figures have changed with the new variants).
As there's nothing to suggest that it doesn't work for over 65's, it does seem like a bit of a political call. If they do want to stop it, logically, they should now target the most vulnerable groups under 65.