London – One of the strongest weapons against the alarming number of new coronavirus variants in the United States and worldwide may be one vaccine that the FDA has not yet approved.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization gave the opportunity to Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to be used internationally, and it is already being distributed in countries around the world to help fight COVID-19. But AstraZeneca is awaiting the results of clinical trials in the United States, which it is expected to complete in the coming weeks, before applying to the FDA.
Meanwhile, scientists at Oxford University in Britain are adapting it in a preventative strike to prevent new coronavirus variants, including the variant first discovered in South Africa, from taking hold.
“Plug and play”
Chief designer, Professor Sarah Gilbert, told CBS News that her team has been working for months to adapt their vaccine to tackle new variants of the coronavirus and expects to have a new version ready in the fall.
The ability to turn on a dime depends on the ‘plug and play’ platform used in the original Oxford vaccine, Gilbert said.
“You decide against which antigen you want to use the virus against which you want to make a vaccine, exactly what version of it is, and then you inject it and make your vaccination,” she said.
She also stressed that since Oxford has its own bio-manufacturing facility on campus, changes can be detected quickly.
“We fixed our pipeline,” she said. “We’re making the first seed of the vaccine at the Oxford manufacturing plant. It’s just minutes from here on campus.”
Gilbert said that a modified vaccine – to address not only the South African variant, but also a number of varieties of concern – could be launched in the United States within a few months.
‘Surprising’ impact
Even before the change, Oxford scientists said their vaccine was very effective in tackling the runaway variant first discovered in the UK. Preliminary real-life data shows it has kept hospitalizations 94% lower, even better than the Pfizer vaccine.
“We have seen the first general use of a vaccine in an environment where a new variant has emerged,” Andrew Pollard, head of Oxford Vaccine Group, told CBS News. “The vaccine has an impact on the variant. It’s amazing.”
Part of the reason for the success is the twelve-week gap between shots in the UK, rather than the four-week program currently standard in the US, Pollard said.
‘If you give the vaccine to many, many more people than the first dose, which immediately ends hospitalization and deaths. Pollard said.
With more than 500,000 people killed in the US, and new variants are still emerging, the need to roll out more shots faster was even higher.