“With the UK, we had an extra three months to fix all the flaws we experienced,” Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of AstraZeneca, told an Italian newspaper, la Repubblica, this week.
On Friday, European Union drug regulators authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for all adults, following the precedent set last month by the British regulator.
In the meantime, Britain may soon receive another vaccine.
Novavax, a biotechnology company based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, reported on Friday that its vaccine proved 89.3 percent effective in a large-scale trial in Britain. The government has secured 60 million doses, to be made at a factory in northeastern England. If British regulators approve, the vaccine will be delivered in the second half of 2021.
In all, the British government has spent at least £ 11.7 billion, or $ 16 billion, on the development, manufacture, purchase and administration of vaccines.
“Vaccination is the only thing we get right,” said Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London.
This does not mean that the launch took place without tension. With crowded hospitals and a more contagious strain ravaging the country, Britain has bet on giving more people partial protection from a single dose, rather than quickly giving fewer people complete protection from two doses.
Doctors whose booster vaccines were postponed were irritated by the approach, accusing the government of making them the subject of a new risky experiment that they fear would make vaccines less effective. Immunologists have raised concerns that a country full of people with only partial immunity could generate vaccine-resistant mutations, while Pfizer said the strategy is not supported by data collected in clinical trials.