AMSTERDAM: The EU’s medicines regulator on Friday recommended the authorisation of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine for adults of all ages, saying it believed it would be safe for older people too.

The green light by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had been expected, but there had been questions about whether it would follow the lead of Germany, which declined to recommend it for the elderly.

“With the recommendation today, we are further expanding the range of Covid-19 vaccines available to EU states to bring the pandemic under control,” EMA chief Emer Cooke told a press conference at the agency’s Amsterdam headquarters. “None of them is a magic wand on their own, but together they provide tools and options that we need,” she added.

The vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company and Oxford University had demonstrated a 60 percent efficacy against Covid-19 across various clinical trials, the EMA said in a statement.