Data, doubts and disputes: A timeline of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine problems

Data, doubts and disputes: A timeline of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine problems

Heralded as "the vaccine for the world," AstraZeneca's Covid shot has been accompanied by high hopes ever since its inception. But, unlike other coronavirus vaccines, the shot developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has been plagued by problem after problem.AstraZeneca's troubles started almost as soon as it published interim trial data, and have continued ever since.The drugmaker "seems to have a real PR problem on its hands in the U.S. and in Europe," Sunaina Sinha Haldea, managing partner of Cebile Capital, told CNBC on Thursday, warning that its "public relations problem risks undermining confidence in the vaccine outside of the U.K."Here's a timeline of all the problems that have struck AstraZeneca in the past year:

November 2020 - Trial data dispute

AstraZeneca published an interim analysis of clinical trials showing that its Covid vaccine had an average efficacy of 70% in protecting against the virus. The result was initially cheered by the global community, already buoyed by positive results for both Moderna's and Pfizer-BioNTech's shots.However, after further scrutiny it became clear that the 70% figure came from combining the analyses of two separate dosing regimens within the trials. One dosing regimen showed an effectiveness of 90% when trial participants received a