British regulators are expected to approve AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in a matter of days.
The UK Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency could release the drug as early as Tuesday, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
The drugmaker praised the vaccine, developed by scientists at Oxford University, as cheaper and easier to store than Pfizer’s. Its release could significantly increase the British government’s target of mass inoculation of the most vulnerable segments of the population by the beginning of spring, according to the newspaper.
“The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is the vaccine now that will be able to immunize the planet more effectively and faster than any other vaccine we have,” Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the medical magazine The Lancet, told CNBC at the beginning Of this month.
Horton added that the end of the pandemic will require the worldwide distribution of vaccines, “because even if we immunize one country, the threat is to reintroduce the virus from another country that is not protected”.
The data from AstraZeneca’s initial trial was criticized in November, with the head of the Trump administration, Operation Warp Speed, noting that the drugmaker showed 90 percent effectiveness only for individuals under 55, a low-risk demographic.
AstraZeneca’s CEO, Pascal Soriot, said later that other test data indicates broader effectiveness.
“We think we have found the winning formula and how to achieve effectiveness that, after two doses, is up to everyone else,” he told the Times of London this month. “I can’t say any more because we are going to publish at some point.”
The United Kingdom should consider the vaccine as a more infectious variant of the virus that has been detected in the country and elsewhere. Pfizer expressed confidence that its vaccine will be effective against the new strain. Soriot said he believed the AstraZeneca vaccine would also be effective, but said the company was testing it to be sure.