NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – The retirement system for public employees in a Michigan county is the lead plaintiff in a shareholder lawsuit against AstraZeneca over its difficulties in creating a COVID-19 vaccine.
Attorneys at Robbins Geller and Vanoverbeke Michaud filed the case for Monroe County on Jan. 26 in New York federal court. They say AstraZeneca bragged about the development of its vaccine, which underperformed and led to a 5% stock drop after a Nov. 23 release.
“Although the release claimed that the drug candidate had met its primary efficacy endpoints, the announcement immediately began to raise questions among analysts and industry experts,” the suit says.
“AstraZeneca disclosed that the interim analysis involved two smaller scale trials in disparate locales (the United Kingdom and Brazil) that, for unexplained reasons, employed two different dosing regimens.
“One clinical trial provided patients a half dose of AZD1222 followed by a full dose, while the other trial provided two full doses. Counterintuitively, AstraZeneca claimed that the half dosing regimen was substantially more effective at preventing COVID-19 at 90% efficacy than the full dosing regimen, which had achieved just 62% efficacy. AstraZeneca highlighted the blended “average efficacy of 70%” among the two trials.”