The British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc said on Monday, that the COVID-19 vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford produced a similar immune response in both older and younger adults, and adverse responses were lower among the elderly.

“It is encouraging to see immunogenicity responses were similar between older and younger adults and that reactogenicity was lower in older adults, where the COVID-19 disease severity is higher,” said an AstraZeneca spokesman. 

The news that older people get an immune response from the vaccine is positive because the immune system weakens with age and older people are those most at risk of dying from the virus. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first from big pharma to secure regulatory approval, along with Pfizer and BioNTech’s candidate.

Details of the finding are expected to be published shortly in a clinical journal, the FT said. It did not name the publication.