text: The company's chief executive said it did less testing on older people due to ethical concerns
  By Michael O'Dwyer 27 January 2021 • 12:03pm
  A US pension fund has launched a legal action against AstraZeneca claiming it suffered losses when the company's share price fell after the results of its Covid vaccine trial disappointed investors.
  Astra's Covid injections are being rolled out in the UK but are still awaiting approval for use in the EU and the US.
  The Cambridge-based pharmaceutical company told investors last year that it was making strong progress on developing a coronavirus jab and that it had agreed contracts to deliver 400 million doses.
  But experts raised concerns over a lack of data on the jab's effectiveness on people aged over 55 when the FTSE 100 company revealed its test results in November.
  Health officials also raised questions about trial results showing that the jab was only 62pc effective in people who received two full doses but 90pc effective for subjects who were given half a dose followed by a full dose.
  A lawsuit filed on Tuesday in New York by Monroe County Employees' Retirement System claimed investors lost money when the firm's share price dropped 5pc in the three days after the results were released, Bloomberg reported.
  The retirement scheme accused the company and its executives of "wrongful acts and omissions" and sought permission to sue on behalf of all investors who lost out as a result of the share price fall.
  Pascal Soriot, Astra's chief executive, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Tuesday that the company's partners at Oxford University had "said it was not ethical to vaccinate old people until they had enough safety data in younger people".
  "Other companies took this risk, went ahead and vaccinated older people faster or earlier," he said.
  "But we have strong data showing very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, similar to what we see in younger people," he added.