Italy Belgium set age limit at 55 for AZN Vaccine3 Feb 2021 16:45
List of EU countries restricting AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine grows
France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Austria and Poland have all restricted the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine in older groups this week, despite the European Medicines Agency recommending it for adults of all ages.
taly and Belgium limiting its use to the under-55s. Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke told reporters on Tuesday: "We don't have enough information to be sure to say that it is good for the elderly."
Italy's medicines agency AIFA has recommended "preferential use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, pending further data, in subjects between 18 and 55 years old, for whom more solid evidence is available."
AIFA said messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines should be used "in older and more frail subjects." Such vaccines, which include the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna jabs, use an inert snippet of genetic code from COVID-19 to trigger an immune response in the body that repels the active virus.