On Wednesday, in a battle against COVID-19, Britain authorized emergency use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. This makes the UK the first country to approve the vaccine and is expected to be the support of India’s immunization programme in early 2021.

The Indian regulator is also expected to follow it soon, however, the subject expert committee who met on Wednesday is collecting more data related to the vaccine’s immunogenicity. It might take a few more days for the emergency-use approval. The expert committee is going to meet next on Friday, which will raise hopes of rollout of vaccines in early January.

The committee will also analyse the updated data which is submitted by Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech’s indigenous vaccine candidate. SII has already stored 40-50 million shots of Covishield and is increasing the number every week. There are reports stating that Covishield might become the most widely used vaccine to be given with a moderate pricing of $3 to $4 a dose and can be transported and also stored in normal refrigerators. Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires freezers at - 70° whereas Moderna’s vaccine needs - 20°, and both are costly.

The UK authorities have decided to give as many single shots as they can with the interval between vaccine shots between 4 - 12 weeks in a proposition to reach the wide spread population. The plan is based on Covishield vaccine shots that have reported higher effectiveness in enlarged intervals. The recent developments indicate that India’s immunization drive will be rolling out in early January, targeting to vaccinate around 30 crore people in its 1st phase by July 2021.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccinewill become the 2nd vaccine to be authorized for use in the UK after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine becomes the 1st in the world to get authorization on 2nd December. The UK government has already pre-ordered 100 million doses to inoculate 50 million people in a two-vaccine shot regime. This will then cover the entire UK population, when combined along with Pfizer vaccine.

The UK regulators are recommending two standard doses at 4 - 12 weeks apart of the Oxford vaccine, which provides 70% efficacy.

Source: ET Healthworld