[News]UK to roll out Astra/Oxford COVID vaccine after world-first approval

[Ryzen2]

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain on Wednesday became the first country to approve the coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, hoping that rapid action will help it stem a record surge of infections driven by a highly contagious form of the virus.

 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, which has ordered 100 million doses, had already fast-tracked approval of a vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech, and administered hundreds of thousands of shots weeks ahead of European Union countries and the United States.

 

Though cheaper and easier to distribute than rival vaccines, the AstraZeneca/Oxford shot has been plagued with questions about its most effective dosage ever since data published last month showed some surprising results.

 

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While other regulators have taken a more cautious approach, Britain's MHRA was at pains to say it had resolved early doubts and - unexpectedly - that it had found an 80% success rate for the administration of two full doses, three months apart, higher than the average that the developers themselves had found.

 

The government plans to take advantage by giving the first dose to a larger number of people most at risk from COVID-19 before starting to administer the boosters.

 

An advisory body recommended doing the same with the Pfizer shot, though Pfizer said its vaccine had not been tested on different dosing schedules.

 

Jeremy Farrar, one of Britain's leading public health experts, said the approval of the AstraZeneca/Oxford shot was to be celebrated, but urged continuing scrutiny, recommending the developers conduct a randomised trial to test the timing of the second dose.

 

Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute, agreed that questions remain about the real efficacy of the vaccine, how well it works in older people, and what data exists to support the change in dosage interval.

 

"In light of the sharply increasing number of cases, the approval... is tremendous news," he said. "However, the reported news does leave unanswered a number of important questions, particularly regarding the longer term."

 

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The government said it would not recommend one vaccine over another for different cohorts of the po[CENSORED]tion, even though data on the AstraZeneca/Oxford shot's efficacy in older people is currently limited.