Countries across the world have authorized a growing menu of coronavirus vaccines, but the question now confronting health officials is who should be given which shots.
The issue is most pressing in the European Union, after regulators authorized the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine — the third shot now available. Officials in eight countries, including Germany, Italy and France, plan to limit that vaccine to younger people, citing insufficient data on the vaccine’s effectiveness in older people.
The doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would be set aside for older people.
Some scientists say that targeting the vaccine to those in whom it is known to be effective was an urgently needed stopgap, especially as variants gain steam. Others said it would only delay injections for the people most in need of protection.
When the British scientists planned large-scale clinical trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine last year, they chose not to vaccinate older participants until they knew the vaccine was safe in younger ones, a decision that led to fewer older people being inoculated.
Britain, India and others authorized it for all adults anyway, but European officials have been more cautious.❐
