Sweden

Federal health officials and an independent oversight board accused AstraZeneca of presenting the world with potentially misleading information about the effectiveness of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine, an extraordinary blow to the credibility of a company whose product has been seen as critical to the global fight against the pandemic.

In a two-page letter to AstraZeneca and federal authorities on Monday, an independent panel of medical experts that was helping oversee the vaccine’s clinical trial in the United States said the company had essentially cherry-picked data that was “most favorable for the study as opposed to the most recent and most complete.”