WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is optimistic about the results of a clinical trial showing the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca to be 79 percent effective at preventing symptomatic illness and 100 percent effective against severe disease requiring hospitalization.
White House coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt called the development “encouraging” during a pandemic-related press briefing on Monday morning. AstraZeneca had released the results of its trial, which enrolled nearly 35,000 people, mostly in the U.S., just hours earlier.
In a key finding, the trial found that the AstraZeneca vaccine did not cause people to develop blood clots. Last week, several European countries temporarily stopped using that vaccine because three dozen people developed