The UK authorized the emergency use of a second COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, becoming the first country to give the green light to an easier-to-use injection, which its developers hope will become the “vaccine for the world”. “.
The Department of Health has indicated that it has accepted the recommendation of the Medicines and Medicines Regulatory Agency to authorize the vaccine developed by Oxford University and the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
The UK has purchased 100 million doses of vaccine and plans to start administering it in the coming days. Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have already received a different vaccine, developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German ally BioNTech.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said: “Today is an important day for millions of people in the UK who will have access to this new vaccine. It has proven to be effective, well tolerated and easier to administer and is provided by the non-profit AstraZeneca. “
“We would like to thank our colleagues at AstraZeneca, Oxford University, the British government and the tens of thousands of participants in the clinical trials,” he added.
Partial results from studies of nearly 24,000 people in the UK, Brazil and South Africa suggest that the injection is safe and has about 70% effectiveness in preventing diseases caused by a coronavirus infection.
The effectiveness is not as great as other potential vaccines, but the Soriot recently told the Sunday Times that it is confident that the vaccine will be as effective as that of competing companies.
Coronavirus vaccines were usually given in two doses, an initial injection and a booster given about three weeks later.
But the British government said that with the AstraZeneca vaccine, the priority would be to give a single dose to as many people as possible, which is believed to provide enormous protection against the virus. He indicated that the population at highest risk would be injected first, with everyone receiving a second dose about 12 weeks after the initial injection.
“The campaign will start on January 4 and will really increase in speed in the first weeks of next year,” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News.
Several countries are expected to depend on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine due to its low cost, availability and ease of use. It can be stored in refrigerators instead of the freezers that other vaccines usually need. The company said it will sell each dose for $ 2.50 and plans to make about 3 billion doses by the end of 2021.
“We have a vaccine for the world,” said one of the study’s leaders, Dr Andrew Pollard of Oxford University.