Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine gets approval in the UK
There is good news for British citizens who have been impacted by the new strain of Coronavirus. The Covid-19 vaccine from Oxford University and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has been approved in the UK. News agency ANI reported that the Oxford University-AstraZeneca’s Corona vaccine has been approved by the United Kingdom regulator. This means that now its first dose will be given soon. Before that Britain had approved Pfizer’s Corona vaccine.
The UK government said the government had accepted the recommendation of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to authorize the Covid-19 vaccine from Oxford University-AstraZeneca. Earlier in its report, the Sunday Telegraph claimed that the British people would start receiving the Corona vaccine of Oxford from January. The approval of the Drug and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) implies that the vaccine is safe and effective. Oxford has also tied up with the Serum Institute of India (SII) in India to manufacture this vaccine and it has been evaluated by MHRA based on the final data submitted to the government on Monday.
The approval comes at a time when senior British scientist has underlined that the Oxford vaccine is indeed about to change, allowing the country to acquire immunity against the disease at the community level by vaccinating against the virus by the summer of 2021. “The person taking the vaccine will be protected from the virus in a few weeks and it is very important,” said Professor Calum Semple, a respiratory specialist and member of the scientific advisory group set up by the government’s emergency system. The UK has ordered around 100 million doses of the vaccine, of which 40 million are expected to be delivered by the end of March.
AstraZeneca head Pascal Soriot has asserted that researchers have found an effective formula using two doses of the vaccine before publishing the final results. They hoped that the vaccine would be more effective than earlier estimates and that it should be as effective against the new strain of the coronavirus.
According to the Sunday Telegraph report, the supply of Oxford vaccine in Britain will start from January. The government intends that 20 people be given the first dose of Oxford or Pfizer vaccine within a fortnight. The report says that the Oxford vaccine is awaiting approval from British regulators, which may be available on Monday. After approval, vaccination centers will be opened at major places, possibly by the second week of January. According to the report, the Oxford vaccine is easier to store and also less expensive than the Pfizer vaccine. Therefore it can be assumed that people living in remote areas will benefit more from it.
Recently, the UK has ordered 40 million doses of the two-shot vaccine of Pfizer and BioNotech. This vaccine has been found to be more than 95% effective in preventing infection. The UK asked its medical regulator, the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), on 20 November, to assess the Pfizer-BioNotech Corona Virus vaccine. After Britain, Bahrain has become the second country in the world to have formally approved the emergency use of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer and its German partner BioNtech.
