Amid the presence of a superspreader COVID strain on its land, the UK has approved the coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca for public use in the country. It is a significant development for India as the vaccine is being co-produced by bio-pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which has a tie-up with the Serum Institute of India.
“The government has today accepted the recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to authorise Oxford University/AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine for use,” the UK health ministry said. The UK has 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, codenamed AZD1222, on order and the roll out will begin on January 4.
The UK is the first country in the world to approve the Oxford University-AstraZeneca for public use. The country is battling a major winter surge driven by a new, highly contagious variant of the virus.
While vaccinations were briefly paused for the Christmas weekend in the UK, the already approved Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines have resumed rollout from Monday.
Volunteers are expected to be delivering at least a million jabs a week to the most vulnerable categories of the population by the middle of next month, once manufacturing has been scaled up. The news comes as a senior UK scientist pinpointed the Oxford vaccine as a real gamechanger, which could see the country achieve herd immunity as a result of vaccination against the deadly virus by the summer months of 2021.
The UK development signals that it will not be long before India gets its first vaccine shot. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had indicated last week that India could give the first COVID-19 vaccine inoculation to the public in the first week of January. It is being widely speculated that the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine could become the first candidate approved by the Indian drug regulatory agency as the country prepares for the commencement of mass inoculations. Reports had claimed that India will give its emergency authorisation nod to the Oxford candidate after studying the decisions taken by the UK.
"The people that have been vaccinated will be protected within a matter of weeks and that's very important, Professor Calum Semple, a respiratory disease expert and member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told the BBC.
AstraZeneca chief Pascal Soriot has stressed that researchers have found the "winning formula" using two doses of the vaccine, ahead of the final results being published.
He has raised hopes that the jabs are more effective than first thought and should be effective against a new variant of the coronavirus that is now causing havoc in most parts of the UK.
