Yeah, there was a ton of news on that vaccine last week.

After a bit of push-back the laboratory acknowledged that this 90% efficacy was comparing a much younger vaccinated population than the one that got placebo.

That has put some doubts on the entire procedure (with countries forcing them to publish details), but it doesn't look like a real problem right now. Anyway that one high efficacy result is very likely flawed.

Anyway, what I get is that the important part is this: "Nobody getting the actual vaccine developed severe-Covid or needed hospital treatment."

Potentially.

[1]https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-da...

There's another readout expected in the USA sooner or later, with a far larger cohort (30K people), but for the full/full dose regimen.

Thanks!

We don't need the super-high efficacy numbers (>90%) that the other vaccines are reporting for this to stop the virus. Typical flu vaccines are ~ 50%, I think the Oxford vaccine's results show that they've achieved this.

The efficacy does not need to be super-high, provided enough people decide to actually go get vaccinated, and the percentage of skeptical people seems to be quite high.

Plus, any given vaccinated individual would have to rely less on others being vaccinated as well.

But I am grateful that vaccines got developed and tested so quickly anyway.

Yes I think they only need to hit 50% for approval. Conservatively they were getting 62% as I recall and the 'experimental endpoint' dose got them to 90%.

The Oxford vaccine is far cheaper (15x) and easier to store so long term it has a lot of competitive advantages.