AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine approved for UK approval

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The coronavirus vaccine developed by

AstraZeneca

and Oxford University will be approved in the UK, paving the way for widespread vaccinations with a home shot that is cheaper and easier to transport and store than other vaccines.

The reports of the medicine and healthcare products, the UK drug regulator, will immediately authorize the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine for emergency use, according to reports from the Financial Times and The Telegraph. The vaccine can be approved within a few days.

Shares in pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, Cambridge, in the UK, traded 3.3% higher in London on Tuesday.

Vaccination of the vaccine is at 90% when patients take half a dose, followed by a full dose. Two full doses taken per month resulted in a lower efficacy of 62%. If all the results are calculated, it has dropped the overall efficiency to 70%, compared to opponents at about 95%.

In an interview with the Sunday Times last weekend, Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, said: ‘We think we have established the winning formula and how to get effectiveness that is after both others. I can not tell you anymore, because we publish at some point. ”

The approval would come weeks after the UK became the first country to authorize a Covid-19 vaccine, based on large-scale clinical trials, when it gave the green light to the US drugmaker’s shot

Pfizer

and his German partner

BioNTech

on 2 December.

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The approval of the vaccine from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford could make a big difference in helping the UK fight the coronavirus pandemic, and lift the severe social distance restrictions introduced before Christmas.

Senior politician Michael Gove told Sky News on Monday that if the vaccine is approved and rolled out according to plan, it is possible to lift strict restrictions.

About 24 million people in England, including all of London, now live under the strictest level of restrictions, including a “stay at home” order. The UK recorded 53,135 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday.

If the approved AstraZeneca-Oxford University shot is approved, it would give the UK household the ability to produce the vaccine.

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The vaccine candidate is also cheaper and easier to transport and store than that of Pfizer and BioNTech. The vaccine should be kept at a low temperature of -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit), compared to the required storage of the British vaccine at normal refrigerator temperatures.

Although the vaccine may soon be rolled out in the UK, it could take February before it is approved in much of Europe.

Noël Wathion, deputy executive director of the European Medicines Agency, the European Union’s drug regulator, told the Belgian press on Tuesday that the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine was unlikely to be approved in the EU next month. Wathion said the drug company had to submit another application to the regulator.