In a statement, the UK government said the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had authorized the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca for the Covid-19 vaccine after „rigorous clinical trials and comprehensive data analysis by MHRA experts“.
The United Kingdom is the first country to have approved the Oxford / AstraZeneca University vaccine.
The statement added that the vaccine had met „stringent standards for safety, quality and efficacy.“
„The NHS has a clear delivery plan and decades of experience providing vaccination programs at a large scale. It has already vaccinated hundreds of thousands of patients with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and will continue to be rolled out. Now the NHS will start putting into place its comprehensive programs. Preparations for the launch of the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine.“
„It is exciting that we found that one of our dosing regimens could be approximately 90% effective, and if this dosing regimen were used, more people could be vaccinated with the planned vaccine supply,“ said Andrew Pollard, chief investigator for the Oxford vaccine trial. In November.
The vaccine – which was developed at Oxford University in England – is much cheaper than others, and most importantly it will be much easier to transport and distribute in developing countries than its competitors because it does not need to be stored in freezing temperatures.
„I think it’s the only vaccine that can be used in those places at the moment,“ Azra Ghani, head of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, told CNN.
The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine can be kept at a refrigerator temperature of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit) for at least six months. Moderna vaccine should be stored at a temperature below 20 ° C (minus 4 ° F) – or in refrigerator temperatures for up to 30 days – and the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine should be stored at minus 75 ° C (minus 103 ° F)), They are used within five days, once cooled at higher temperatures.
“Pfizer and Moderna require freezer storage, and this is not present in many places,” said Ghani.
Cold Chain Cold is the standard storage used worldwide to deliver vaccines from central sites to local health clinics. Ghani added that so far, the AstraZeneca vaccine „is the only one that can definitely be delivered to these systems.“
Vaccines depend on various technologies. AstraZeneca’s offer – like Russia’s Johnson & Johnson and Sputnik V vaccine – uses adenoviruses to transfer genetic parts of the coronavirus into the body.
