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Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020

Did developers of the two recently-approved COVID-19 vaccines include elderly subjects in their testing?

Lisa Freedland, Gigafact
yes

With people over 65 accounting for 80% of U.S. COVID-19 fatalities, understanding the efficacy and safety of potential vaccines among the elderly is especially important.

The founder of BioNTech SE, which developed the first approved vaccine in partnership with Pfizer Inc., said the vaccine “appears to work” in the higher-risk elderly population, with 94% effectiveness in trial subjects over 65, according to the Los Angeles Times. In the companies’ large-scale trial, 42% of enrollees were over 55.

An early “investigational” trial of the Moderna Inc. vaccine, which was developed in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, included 40 subjects over 55 years old (20 of whom were over 70), and confirmed that the response was similar to that in younger age groups. In the later-stage larger trial, 25% of participants were over 65.

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