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The corona vaccination from Astra Zeneca does not seem to curb the spread of the virus sufficiently.

This is what scientists from Oxford University report in the journal "The Lancet".

According to the study, the vaccine prevents only 27 percent of asymptomatic infections with the virus - and it is estimated that they make up up to 40 percent of the virus carriers.

Of the 3,300 participants who - as originally planned - had received the full dose twice, according to these data, 29 and 0.9 percent of those vaccinated became infected.

In the hardly larger control group, it was 40 and thus 1.2 percent.

In the few subjects who accidentally received a full dose and a half dose, the protection against a symptom-free infection was higher - 59 percent.

The team led by Andrew Pollard from the University of Oxford, who developed the vaccine with the company, is the first to publicly present comprehensive data on the effectiveness of the vaccine.

So far only the information from press releases was known.

Against an infection, which is also noticeable through symptoms, the administration of two full doses offers 70 percent protection, the researchers report.

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The preliminary results largely confirm the data that the university and the Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca announced in November.

So far, the AZD1222 vaccine, which is being tested in Great Britain, Brazil and South Africa, has proven to be largely safe.

Only three of the almost 24,000 participants developed severe side effects over an initial period of 3.4 months, although it is unclear whether they came from the vaccine.

One of those affected belonged to the control group who had not received the Covid-19 vaccination.

With a second, the affiliation is unclear.

All three have recovered or are on the mend, it is said.

According to the information, the data on effectiveness are based only on data from 11,600 test persons, and those on safety on data from almost 24,000.

According to the evaluation, the previous protective effect depends heavily on the dose: of those 4440 participants who received two full doses, 27 developed symptoms and contracted Covid-19, which corresponds to 0.5 percent.

In the similarly large control group there were 71 (1.6 percent).

With this target figure, this results in a protective effect of 62 percent.

In the significantly fewer participants who accidentally received half a dose first and then the full dose the second time, the corresponding protection was 90 percent: In the group actually vaccinated, three of almost 1367 people (0.2 percent) fell ill, in the similar group the large control group had 30 (2.2 percent).

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However, in this part of the vaccination no participant was older than 55 years.

And even with those test subjects who received two full doses, it is hardly possible to make any statements about older people, because here only five people over 55 years of age fell ill.

The analyzes in this age group continued, the researchers write.

The researchers have not yet been able to provide any information on the duration of the protective effect.

The AZD1222 vaccine is based on the weakened version of a chimpanzee cold virus and contains genetic material from a surface protein with which the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen docks onto human cells.

The agent is said to promote the formation of specific antibodies as well as T cells - both are important for the immune system.

A total of countries around the world have already ordered billions of cans from Astra Zeneca.