GENEVA – The World Health Organization on Monday listed the AstraZeneca and Covid-19 vaccine from the University of Oxford for emergency use, expanding access to the relatively cheap vaccine in the developing world.
“Now we have all the parts ready for the rapid distribution of vaccines. But we still need to increase production,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, at a news conference.
“We continue to ask Covid-19 vaccine developers to send their dossiers to WHO for review while submitting them to regulators in high-income countries,” he said.
A WHO statement said it had approved the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India.
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The UN health agency’s listing comes days after a WHO panel provides tentative recommendations on the vaccine, saying that two doses with an interval of about 8 to 12 weeks should be administered to all adults and can be used in countries with the South African variant of the coronavirus, too.
The WHO review concluded that the Astrazeneca vaccine met “mandatory” safety criteria and that its effectiveness benefits outweighed its risks.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford injection was acclaimed because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals, including that of Pfizer-BioNTech, which was listed for emergency use by WHO in late December.
Nearly 109 million people were infected with the new coronavirus worldwide and more than 2.5 million died, according to a Reuters count.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
The doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine represent the majority of the doses in the sharing scheme of the COVAX vaccine against coronavirus, with more than 330 million doses of the vaccine expected to begin to be distributed to the poorest countries from the end of February.
WHO has established its emergency use list (EUL) process to help the poorest countries without their own regulatory resources to quickly approve drugs for new diseases like Covid-19, which could otherwise lead to delays.
The COVAX Facility, which is co-led by the Gavi vaccine alliance, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the United Nations Children’s Fund, said the doses would cover an average of 3.3 percent of the total population of 145 participating countries.